ABSTRACT
In common with other regional traditions of law and society studies, law and society research in Latin America is concerned with the relationship between law – understood broadly as norms, institutions, and practices – and long-run patterns of development, political environment, institutional forms, and cultural specificities. However, as we argue in this introduction, even when it is impossible to characterize such a diverse region, the distinctive contours of socio-legal research in Latin America have been particularly shaped over time by key political and historical junctures, and by the changing nature of the socio-legal academy. 1 Unsurprisingly, law and society scholarship in the late twentieth century was marked by shifts in the region’s political history: from the initial optimism about legal transplants during the period of the Alliance for Progress, and the subsequent law and development movement, through the pessimism of the years of dictatorship when authoritarian legal orders were consolidated, to the role that human rights and new constitutional orders have played in numerous states following transitions from authoritarian rule and civil war. More recently, scholarship has focused on issues such as the justiciability of the rights of indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples, the relationship between law and legal institutions, and social change, or the judicialization of governmental corruption that has led to highly charged confrontations between executives, legislatures, and the judiciary in many countries of the region.
