Americas Articles

A convergence of inward and outward-looking processes in US law schools creates both risk and potential reward in the development of legal education.  How each law faculty succeeds or fails in coordinating those processes will affect not just US law schools, but legal education across the globe. These processes should not produce changes without proper consideration of their impact on developments outside the United States.  Otherwise the result may be both the abdication of US leadership in legal education and a significant negative impact on the way in which US legal education can be and has been a catalyst for positive change in transition countries.

As a general rule, events that did not happen are not considered newsworthy or particularly relevant. Yet, the clue that helped Sherlock Holmes solve one of his cases was precisely a non-event: the fact that the dog had not barked. Likewise, the economic performance of Latin America since the outset of the sub-prime mortgage collapse in 2007 could be described as the financial crisis that did not happen.

Take a look at any wall or sidewalk in Venezuela, and you are certain to see two images peering back at you—Hugo Chávez and Simón Bolívar.

The field of transitional justice is rapidly emerging within international human rights law. Organizations such as the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), deploy dozens of transitional justice consultants to post-conflict states, and academic Ruti Teitel notes that the international system has lately seen a pervasive normalization of transitional justice in human rights law.