Campaigning to eradicate court delay: power shifts and new governance in criminal justice in Argentina

Since the transition to democracy court delay has been a powerful signifier of the problem of the criminal justice in Argentina. This has been the case particularly in the Province of Buenos Aires where court delay was constantly projected by the Provincial Government’s narrative as evidence of injustice and/or inefficiency in the system. It has been the focus of sustained political attacks upon judges, defence lawyers and public prosecutors by members of the national and provincial parliaments of Argentina. These narratives of court delay have enabled a number of reforms of the criminal justice system which have reshaped organisational practices to the extent of constituting a new and different strategy of producing justice. This article identifies, describes and makes sense of those discourses and practices, and the strategies and tactics behind them by analysing the governmental narrative and the judicial and organisational reforms.     

Habermas on Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

After drawing a distinction between a cosmopolitan attitude and institutional cosmopolitanism, this paper reconstructs Habermas's account of the relationship between morality and law in order to argue that this account can be the basis of a cosmopolitan attitude which, although insufficient, on its own, to ground cosmopolitan institutions, can, nonetheless, motivate interest in institutional cosmopolitanism. The paper then examines Habermas's proposal for institutionalizing a system of cosmopolitan governance. It distinguishes and explores the reach and limitations of three arguments in favor of institutional cosmopolitanism not always adequately differentiated in Habermas's work: (a) an argument from the weakness of the nation state, (b) an argument from the democratic deficit of nationalism, and (c) an argument from the state's incapacity to guarantee human rights.     

The rise of the Global South,the IMF and the future of Law and Development

Following the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis the world has witnessed a re-accommodation of the global financial system. In the particular case of middle-income countries they have disentangled themselves from the conditionality of the IMF and grown into more assertive actors in international forums, proposing new alternative mechanisms to become more financially independent and for the provision of development assistance. This article critically reviews the new reality by assessing the strategies deployed by developing countries to reduce the IMF’s influence, and explores the potential consequences of the rise of middle-income nations for Law and Development.     

International Co‐Authorship and Research Team Performance in Colombia

This article examines the ways in which International Scientific Collaboration, as observed by the co‐authorship of journal articles written by local scientists and partners located overseas, affects the ability of research teams to produce bibliographic outputs and to contribute to local knowledge. A sample of 672 teams was randomly selected for the analyses. In addition, 20 interviews with experts and team members were administered to discuss models and results. Results show that co‐authoring with partners located overseas increases team output by nearly 40% and by between three and five bibliographic products. It also shows that a team's odds of involving Colombia in its research process are 2.2 times larger for those co‐authoring with a partner located overseas than for those that do not. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.     

COVID-19 Pandemic and Social Unrest: The Social Protest by Other Means. Reflections on the Argentinian Case

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world have implemented exceptional measures aimed at restricting people's mobility or banning public spaces used, among other things, for protest, thus causing the expected regressive effects in the socioeconomic sphere. What happens with social protest when the public space is banned? Does it stop, is it displaced, does it occur in any other form? In this article we present a map of protest in Argentina since the beginning of the pandemic. We conclude that the levels of participation remain high and that, given the features of the protest itself, its claims may be channelled into the institutions.     

The Geography of Repression and Opposition to Autocracy

State repression is a prominent feature of nondemocracies, but its effectiveness in quieting dissent and fostering regime survival remains unclear. We exploit the location of military bases before the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile in 1973, which is uncorrelated to precoup electoral outcomes, and show that counties near these bases experienced more killings and forced disappearances at the hands of the government during the dictatorship. Our main result is that residents of counties close to military bases both registered to vote and voted “No” to Pinochet's continuation in power at higher rates in the crucial 1988 plebiscite that bolstered the democratic transition. Potential mechanisms include informational frictions on the intensity of repression in counties far from bases and shifts in preferences caused by increased proximity to the events. Election outcomes after democratization show no lasting change in political preferences.     

When DNA is Not Available,Can We Still Identify People? Recommendations for Best Practice*

Recommendations of best practice to conduct identifications in settings with large numbers of victims and technological limitations are provided, based on a sample of 116 cases in which positive presumptive identifications were generated using "traditional" techniques, and were later corroborated through DNA testing. Traditional techniques generally consist of combining witness testimony, personal effects and clothing, anthropological and dental data to corroborate or to exclude the identity of an individual. Experts participating in traditional identifications must develop emic categories to transform objective physical features into recognizable categories by the family, or to do very the opposite-to develop an ethic system by which the expert translates the cues given by a family member into objective categories that are usable in standard forensic and legal contexts.     

Two concepts of desert

In the first section I briefly consider some stituations in which standard desert-claims would be disputed, with the aim of revealing why and by whom they are asserted or denied. Having attained some understanding of the point of different desert-statements, I propose an accound of their content that entails the thesis that statements of positive desert (deserving something desirable) sharply differ in meaning from statements of negative desert (deserving something undesirable), even when expressed in the same form. In the second section I use this ambiguity thesis to argue against an appealing way of defending Hegel's claim that a wrongdoer has a right to be punished and against Kant's defense of the view that there is a duty to punish those who deserve it. I also show how an understanding of negative desert that recognizes the ambiguity thesis enables us to defend the ordinary view of mercy against Kantian criticisms and to reject the popular misconception that mercy is necessarily at odds with justice. In the third section I use the ambiguity thesis to rebut the common claim (found in Mill and Aristotle, among others) that it is unjust for a person to have or be given mone benefits than she deserves. I conclude by showing how an understanding of positive desert that recognizes the ambiguity thesis leads to a rejection both of certain complaints against traditional systems of private property and also of certain moralistic scruples that might give pause to those who acknowledge the moral duty to assist the needy.