Description
Since the transitions to democracy in Latin America several international or government agencies have promoted judicial reforms in the region. Improving the rule of law was crucial for the stability of democracy and the certainty of a market oriented economy. International organizations such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the World Bank or government agencies such as USAID or the European Commission invested several resources to reform the justice system. International aid was directed toward changing the legal system (from mixed-inquisitorial to accusatorial), granting independence to Supreme Courts, creating constitutional courts, public defender offices, professionalizing judges, prosecutors, the police, as well as other members of the justice-sector complex. The United States’ role in promoting these reforms in Latin American countries was very active. In this paper, we explore the role played by societal actors, in particular, law faculty members in facilitating the implementation of the 2008 criminal justice reform at the state level through the change of law schools' curricula, the training of professors and the development of infrastructure for the adversarial criminal system. We argue that law faculty members’ commitment contributes to set a steady base for the success of the new accusatorial system. We use the cases of different law schools in the states of Chihuahua, State of Mexico and Jalisco to provide evidence regarding the commitment of these societal actors with the reform and how collaboration with United States might be conducted in the future.
