Customer Reviews

Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

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Lisa Hilbink's Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship provides a thought-provoking account of the judiciary in Chile and why this "independent" court failed to protect human rights during the Pinochet era. Her argument is that the hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of the judiciary allowed senior conservative judges to keep the rest of the judges in line with their "apolitical" ideology. Moreover, judges exhibited pro-conservative tendencies even before and after Pinochet, indicating a deeper structural problem than simply fear of the military.

Hilbink's work raises a larger question of what judicial independence actually means. In Chile, the courts were formally independent from the government - and by Hilbink's account seldom overtly pressured - yet within the judiciary judges were not independent. It's an interesting question - one rule of law advocates ought pay closer attention to.

One gap is that she barely discusses the Constitutional Tribunal. The Tribunal was composed of several members appointed by the Supreme Court, yet it actually ruled against the Pinochet regime in key cases. This seems like an interest test of her theory - i.e., placing judges in a different institutional context will yield different results. It merits further exploration. Otherwise, this is a very useful book for anyone in the field of judicial politics.