Democratization and the Judiciary
This book project investigates the extent to which courts in Latin America and Africa have been able to say 'no' when the executive branch has overstepped its democratic mandate. The issues were explored in collaboration with local researchers as well as leading US and UK scholars in the field. The findings are presented in a special issue of "Democratization" (2003), and published in "Democratization and the Judiciary: The Accountability Function of Courts in New Democracies" (London: Frank Cass Publishers (2003). The book presents papers by Martin Shapiro and Jennifer Widner on the US experience and its lessons for new democracies, followed by case studies of Colombia, Chile, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Guatemala, Brazil and Argentina. The articles were first presented in a workshop held at the Faculty of Law, Bergen, November 2002. This project, which is part of the "Courts in Transition" research programme (SIP), is a collaboration between the University of Bergen, the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), and CMI.
