Judicial Independence and Human Rights in Latin America (PDF)

ELIN SKAAR Senior Researcher and head of the Transitional Justice Research Programme at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

"The scholarship on transitional justice has flourished in the last decade. But few have analyzed the connections between transitional justice and judicial politics. Elin Skaar's book does just that. It explores in the cases of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay the role of courts in shaping options and trajectories of post-transitional justice - and concretely the chances of criminal prosecutions for past crimes. The volume greatly enriches the theory and empirical knowledge of the political and institutional complexities that shape transitional justice outcomes as these unfold. Through this scholarly contribution we are one step closer to bridging our understanding of how past legacies and the future of post-transitional processes are connected." - Pilar Domingo, ODI

"Elin Skaar's new book traces the importance of judicial reform and judicial independence in the move from amnesty and impunity towards trials in the Southern Cone of Latin America. She contests the idea that the insistence on justice by courts in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay is simply a matter of implementing executive preferences. Rather, she finds that judicial independence and arrangements played a key role. Her research adds a welcome focus on judicial actors to the literature on transitional justice, Latin American politics, and the relationship between politics and law. She also tells a number of fascinating stories, particularly the little-known case of Uruguay, where her work sheds new light and entails sharp analysis." - Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Hastings College of Law, University of California

"This book is a thoroughly researched and cogently argued study about the issue of prosecutions for human rights violations and other atrocities in several Latin American countries. Prosecutions are a major component of the area of theory and practice known as transitional justice, a relatively young field of law, ethics, and politics which has increasingly attracted the attention of