Measuring Judicial Performance in Latin America

An increasing number of development scholars and policymakers are recognizing the importance of Latin American judicial reforms in shaping the ultimate outcome of the region's "dual transition." We can hardly begin to assess the conditions in which judicial systems are likely to improve, however, unless we have a means to measure judicial performance systematically across countries. This article offers just such a comprehensive cross-national measure of judicial performance for Latin America. Drawing from a survey of Latin American legal scholars and practitioners from 17 countries in the region, it seeks to establish a more valid, and therefore more useful, assessment of the performance of Latin American judiciaries than existing measures, in order to advance efforts to understand the causes and consequences of effective judicial reforms in the region.     

Knowledge of Brahman as a solution to fear in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa/Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James suggests that the human experience of a fundamental and existential uneasiness can be found at the core of most religious traditions, and that these traditions constiute essentially a proposed solution to this uneasiness. The present investigation focuses upon the notion of uneasiness, particularly fear, and its solution in the early Hindu tradition. Through a close examination of textual expressions of both desire and fear from the R̥gveda, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, it is proposed that “liberation” in the early Upaniṣadic period, or at least the precursor to the traditional notion of liberation, actually meant freedom from fear, rather than freedom from karma or saṁs̥ra. The Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad suggests that the origin of duality is desire, and duality necessarily results in fear. By relinquishing the sorts of desires so frequently expressed in the earlier vedic literature, together with an understanding of the essentially non-dual relationship between the ātman and brahman, a state of complete freedom from fear (abhaya) may be achieved.     

The role of Britain in West German foreign policy since 1949 1

Anglo‐German relations since 1949 have been a curious mixture of harmony and tension. This paper looks at the reasons both for cooperation and conflict and some of the ways in which German perceptions of Britain have changed since 1949. Attitudes to security, economic integration and political identity produced a complex pattern, where each side at times had unrealistic expectations of the other. Recently published documents from the Auswärtiges Amt for 1963–64 give an insight into the ‘official mind’ of German foreign policy at a critical moment.