EPILOGUE: COURTS AND DEMOCRACY BETWEEN IDEALS AND REALITIES

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Notes

1. In fact, some research has suggested that Brazilian social rights jurisprudence has actually hindered the realisation of these rights by siphoning government funds away from pro-poor initiatives in order to satisfy court-ordered pharmaceutical provision that disproportionately benefits the middle and upper classes (da Silva and Terrazas 2011; Motta Ferraz 2010).

2. This phenomenon is evident in the context of restorative justice in post-authoritarian countries. Argentina's Supreme Court upheld in 1987 amnesty laws aimed at shielding perpetrators of serious human rights violations committed during the military junta era in that country. That ruling was overturned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1992, but it was not until 2005, after nearly two decades and when the shadow of the military junta era diminished considerably, that the amnesty laws were declared unconstitutional and void by the now-courageous Supreme Court of Argentina. Similar dynamics is evident in other Latin American countries, most recently in Guatemala with the conviction (overturned shortly thereafter) of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. Montt was put to trial for genocide and crimes against humanity a full 30 years after the mass killings of indigenous Mayan civilians took place, and only after he had lost much of his political clout.

Additional information

Ran Hirschl (PhD, Yale) is Professor of Political Science and Law, and holds a Canada Research Chair in Constitutionalism, Democracy and Development at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press, 2004 and 2007), Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010)—winner of the 2011 Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory, and Comparative Matters (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2014), as well as over 70 articles and book chapters on comparative constitutional law, constitutional law and religion, and the intellectual history of comparative constitutional studies. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Law & Courts, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), and a co-editor of a book series on comparative constitutional law and policy published by Cambridge University Press.