Book Review: Reconstructing rights: Courts, parties, and equality rights in India, South Africa, and the United States by S. Stohler
Date | 01 June 2022 |
Published date | 01 June 2022 |
DOI | 10.1177/1057567720910232 |
Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
develop specific approaches to confront local contexts. To that end, Chapter 4 explores various tech-
nical and political solutions enacted across the region to combat organized crime and its perpetrators.
This discussion, importantly, highlights the differences between law enforcement- and military-led
interventions and their political ramifications, given the fraught history of the military in much of
Latin America. However, this discussion is not in-depth, and contemporary, political realities and
tensions within and between countries are not considered.
Chapter 5, aimed at policy makers both in the United States and in the region, outlines strategies to
better confront organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. In some respects, this discus-
sion has aged badly as the Trump administration has seen the State Department’s international influ-
ence weaken. Ellis rightly notes that responses to organized crime require international cooperation.
He argues that the United States should be an active investor in the well-being of Latin America,
working with governments to help them pursue not only American interests but also ends they
see fit. However, this chapter fails to consider Latin America’s political realities, particularly its
history of political instability that continues into the present.
In terms of presentation, the book does have some frustrating elements. Occasionally, the reader
needs to look beyond the pages offered to gain a clearer picture. For example, the presentation of
historical figures and actions is not consistently accompanied by dates that clearly indicate when
the actions discussed unfolded. Another issue is that the author switches, unexplainably, between
the English and Spanish or Portuguese names of some groups (e.g. the Shining Path and Sendero
Luminoso or the Red Command and Comando Vermelho), without telling the reader that these
terms refer to the same organization, thereby making the work less accessible to an audience that
is new to the material. Additionally, the book lacks the original terms of policies, acronyms, and
organizations presented in their entirety in their original language.
Finally, this book is not comprehensive—an effort to be so would require an encyclopedia—so
having clear indications of where to look for additional information, as this book ages, would be
useful for readers who wish to update their knowledge. Nonetheless, this book makes three important
contributions. First, it provides clear frameworks to understanding how organized crime and enforce-
ment fit together in a transnational context. Second, it shows how transnational organized crime must
not be reduced to the drug trade in the public or political discourse. Third, and most importantly, it
sheds light on criminogenic issues in places that are seldomly discussed. By including several of the
smaller countries in the region, the reader begins to understand the financial difficulties smaller states
face in undertaking activities that bigger countries, like the United States, take for granted. Ellis’s
work clearly shows that effective solutions must be financially viable, and, to be so, some solutions
necessarily require cooperation among foreign partners.
ORCID iD
R. V. Gundur https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4241-8811
Stohler, S. (2019). Reconstructing rights: Courts, parties, and equality rights in India, South Afr ica, and the United
States. Cambridge University Press. 264 pp. $82.00, ISBN: 9781108717427.
Reviewed by: Kinfe Yilma ,Addis Ababa University Law School, Ethiopia
DOI: 10.1177/1057567720910232
Much ink has been spilled to offer a comprehensive and persuasive account of the role of judges in
the progressive development of law. The question of whether judges are the sole actors in the act of
246 International Criminal Justice Review 32(2)
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