Why the Devil Couldn't Beat Daniel Webster: Absolutes,Contradictions, and the Transference of American Legal Institutions

In this article I present a critique of efforts to extend the “rule of law model” to developing countries by the transfer of American legal institutions. I examine a popular American literary text, Steven Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster, to reveal a basic contradiction between constitutionalism and democracy in American legal culture. I analyze the rule of law model as a discourse, relating the transfer of these contradictory values to unintended results of legal reform recently reported in Costa Rica. Finally, I present conclusions about how transferring the values of American legal culture through legal reforms is related to judicialization in developing countries.