The fieldwork for this project took place during the course of an exploratory one-month trip to Argentina and Brazil in the summer of 1999, a much longer research trip to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in 2000–01, and brief follow-up trips to Argentina and Brazil in 2004 and 2005. During the main research trip I spent four months in Buenos Aires, about three in São Paulo, and approximately a month each in Córdoba, Montevideo, and Salvador da Bahia.

The book works at three levels of analysis: countries, judicial districts, and individual legal cases. At the very outset, I chose three countries that, by reputation at least, promised some variation on the dependent variable: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. As the data more or less confirmed, I expected Uruguay to be a “positive” case, Brazil to be the “negative” case, and Argentina to fall somewhere in the middle. What I did not expect was the magnitude of the cross-national variation or the important sub-national differences.

At the sub-national level, in each of the two federal countries (Brazil and Argentina), I selected two different legal environments – in each case, I compared the largest and most economically important city in the country to a more remote provincial capital, with similar populations (just over and just under two million) and a solid industrial base.