Gamboa, Laura; García-Holgado, Benjamín; & González-Ocantos, Ezequiel. Courts against backsliding: Lessons from Latin America. Law & Policy 46(4): 358–379 (2024). Across Latin America’s recent wave of democratic erosion, courts have often been portrayed as victims of executive encroachment or as instruments weaponized by autocrats. This article develops a different analytical frame by highlighting cases in …
Aguilar, A. (2012). Institutional changes in the public prosecutor’s office: The cases of Mexico, Chile and Brazil. Mexican law review, 4(2), 261-290. Given the critical role played by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the criminal justice system, the reform of its powers and underlying framework is fundamental in enhancing the rule of law and democracy. …
Aguiar Aguilar, A. A. (2023). Courts and the judicial erosion of democracy in Latin America. Politics & Policy, 51(1), 7-25. How are courts used to erode democracy? Using the literature on democratic backsliding and judicial politics as a theoretical framework, in this work, Aguiar Aguilar shows the path of how courts are captured by incumbents and then …
Batesmith, Alex. “Lawyers Who Want to Make the World a Better Place – Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering.” In Leading Works on the Legal Profession, 1st ed., Routledge, 2023. Scheingold and Sarat’s Something to Believe In (2004) remains a foundational statement on cause lawyering—one that challenges the narrow …
Batesmith, Alex, and Kieran McEvoy. “‘Closeted’ Cause Lawyering in Authoritarian Cambodia.” Law & Society Review 59 (2025): 463–495. doi:10.1017/lsr.2025.29. In this article, the authors analyze how lawyers in Cambodia pursue social justice, human rights, and rule-of-law commitments while navigating an increasingly repressive authoritarian environment. Drawing from seven years of interviews with 37 Cambodian lawyers and …
On November 22, thousands of Tunisians marched through downtown Tunis in one of the largest demonstrations yet against President Kais Saied. Protesters—dressed in black and carrying signs reading “Enough repression” and “The streets belong to the people”—accused Saied of turning the country into an “open-air prison” and consolidating one-man rule through the judiciary and security …
Federal judges have dismissed the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, ruling that the prosecutor who brought both cases — Lindsey Halligan — was unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney. Because Halligan lacked legal authority to present the cases to the grand jury, both indictments were thrown out without prejudice. You can read the …
A federal judge has dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that the prosecutor who secured their indictments, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney. Judge Cameron Currie found that Halligan’s appointment violated federal law and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Because her …
Levin, Leslie C., The Use of State Discipline to Sanction Attorneys General and Other High-Ranking Legal Officers (November 15, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5753303 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5753303 The United States Attorney General, state attorneys general, and high-ranking officials in their offices, like all lawyers, are subject to rules of professional conduct. Increasingly, when they push the boundaries of these …
A coalition of 22 human rights organizations has called on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to take decisive action following its recent review of Egypt’s human rights record. Rights groups argue that both Egypt’s official report (2019–2024) and the Commission’s rapporteur minimized or ignored extensive abuses—including the imprisonment of journalists, political critics, …