Description: In Courts that Matter, Sandra Botero tackles a crucial question: Can courts advance socioeconomic rights? Using a rigorous comparative study of the impact of socioeconomic rights rulings in Colombia and Argentina, Botero argues that such decisions can be significantly impactful when courts deploy certain monitoring mechanisms and when legally empowered organizations in civil society are engaged in the outcome. The book includes case studies of landmark rulings on environmental, health, housing, and other socioeconomic rights and charts pathways for broader applicability through comparison with rulings by the Indian Supreme Court. The book demonstrates how Colombian and Argentine highest tribunals have, at times, successfully configured important new political spaces for the effective pursuit of public policy goals, in conjunction and dialogue with other social and political actors. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Brief description: Sandra Botero is Associate Professor at Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá, Colombia). She is the co-editor of The Limits of Judicialization: From Progress to Backlash in Latin America (2022).
Review Quotes: 'Courts that Matter is the best book on judicial impact I've read in some time. Botero's key empirical contribution is to highlight the use of monitoring mechanisms and collaborative oversight arenas by courts seeking to avoid some longstanding pitfalls facing effective implementation of their decisions. The book's theoretical contribution is even more ambitious. Botero shows that at their best, judicial institutions sometimes collaborate with other key actors in the state and civil society to foster increased attention to, and deliberation about, entrenched practices of rights violation. Rather than displacing democratic politics from the outside, court decisions sometimes create new political spaces in which democratic politics can proceed.' Thomas Moylan Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs