We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 sheds new light on what the World Health Organization described as "the single most devastating infectious disease outbreak ever recorded" by situating the Iberian Peninsula as the key point of connection, both epidemiologically and discursively, between Europe and the Americas. The essays in this volume elucidate specific aspects of the pandemic that have received minimal attention until now, including social control, gender, class, religion, national identity, and military medicine's reactions to the pandemic and its relationship with civilian medicine, all in the context of World War I. As the authors point out, however, the experiences of 1918-19 remain persistently relevant to contemporary life, particularly in view of events such as the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Contributors: Mercedes Pascual Artiaga, Catherine Belling, Josep Bernabeu-Mestre, Ryan A, Davis, Esteban Domingo, Magda Fahrni, Hernán Feldman, Pilar León-Sanz, Maria Luísa Lima, Maria deFátima Nunes, María-Isabel Porras-Gallo, Anny Jackeline Torres Silveira, José Manuel Sobral, Paulo Silveira e Sousa, Christiane Maria Cruz de Souza. María-Isabel Porras-Gallo is Professor of History of Science in the Medical Faculty of Ciudad Real at the University of Castile-La Mancha (Spain). She is the author of Un reto para la sociedad madrileña: la epidemia de gripe de 1918-1919 and co-editor of El drama de la polio. Un problema social y familiar en la España franquista. Ryan A. Davis is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Spanish Flu: Narrative and Cultural Identity in Spain, 1918.
The purpose in this chapter is to develop a framework of analysis to advance our understanding of the processes that have led to the adoption of novel legal strategies by a variety of social and political actors in recent Latin American politics, as well as to examine the changing political narratives around rights and the rule of law that have accompanied these new strategies. The emphasis is on tracking what appear to be new forms of judicial activism, legal mobilization and what have been called “rights revolutions” in the region, and doing so from the broader perspective of legal culture and beyond the confines of the formal legal institutions or the courtroom.
Bearing in mind the diversity of experiences in Latin America, the emphasis of the chapter is on societies that share some of the following characteristics: where regime transition is relatively recent and brings with it a variety of political experiences connected to the struggle to redress human rights abuses of the past (with varying levels of effectiveness); where the notions of rule of law and rights-based democracy remain weak projects in reality, but have acquired greater discursive projection than at any other time of constitutional and state-building endeavors in the region; and (in some cases) where legal pluralism has acquired to varying degrees a prominent political face. These are processes that to all appearances coincide with and are causally connected to new forms and greater levels of judicial activism, or judicialization of political and social conflict.
The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in
Argentina. By Rebecca Bill Chavez. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2004. 272p. $55.00.
This book is a welcome addition to a young but growing body of
scholarly work on rule-of-law construction in new democracies from a
political science perspective. Rebecca Bill Chavez develops a
persuasive study of the conditions under which rule of law is more
likely to emerge, through an analysis of judicial politics at the
national level in Argentina and in two of its provinces, San Luis and
Mendoza.
Elusive Reform is an important and welcome addition to the still underdeveloped area of political science analysis of judicial institutions in Latin America. Few volumes to date have undertaken such an in-depth study of the complex issue of rule of law and its problematic construction in fragile democratic systems in the region. The book analyzes the experience of rule of law reform in Argentina and Venezuela, with some comparative reference to other Latin American countries.
This article examines the role of the Supreme Court in the development
of the Mexican political system. The judiciary provided an important source of
regime legitimation, as it allowed for the consolidation of a state of legality and
a claim to constitutional rule of law, at least in discourse. However, the judiciary
was in effect politically subordinated to the logic of dominant party rule through
both specific constitutional reforms since 1917 that weakened the possibility of
judicial independence and a politics of institutional and political co-optation. The
constitutional reform of 1994 has significantly altered the nature of the
relationship between the executive and the Supreme Court.
