Introduction

Latin America's courts are in crisis. Inadequate material resources and infrastructure, outdated procedures, case backlog, corruption, politicization, and cronyism are among the many problems that judiciaries face. Although such difficulties are hardly new to the region, over the last decade the image of the judiciary has grown decidedly worse. According to a recent survey published in The Economist, the percentage of Latin American citizens that has confidence in the judiciary has fallen from approximately 35 percent in 1996 to around 20 percent in 2003. In individual countries, the judiciary's image is often far worse. Despite the ineptitude and abuse of power waged by political elites under dictatorship and democracy alike, judges today are less popular than presidents, the military, or the police (ibid.).

Judicial independence has proved particularly elusive. In 1990, Argentina's former President Carlos Menem packed the Supreme Court, proclaiming, “Why should I be the only Argentine President not to have my own Supreme Court?” A few years later, former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori paralyzed his country's Constitutional Court by impeaching three sitting justices. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez dissolved the Supreme Court en masse in 1997, suspended approximately 300 lower level judges, and appointed 101 new judges to the bench. In Ecuador in the same year, the new government carried out a similar purge. In 2003, presidents in Paraguay and Argentina, respectively, launched impeachment proceedings against sitting justices, causing several to tender their resignations.