Judges, Litigants, and the Politics of Rights

Enforcement in Argentina

Sandra Botero

In recent decades, citizens in developing democracies have increasingly turned to courts

to solve political disputes and to enforce rights. Courts in Argentina, Costa Rica,
Colombia, India, and South Africa have become key political players, curbing executive
excesses and handing down rights-affirming decisions. In line with Rosenberg’s
cautious view of the potential of courts to advance change in the US,1 some argue that
judicial intervention is inconsequential and can go so far as to exacerbate preexisting
inequalities by producing backlash or favoring individualistic, piecemeal, and irrational
approaches to public policy.2 Others have a more optimistic assessment of the role of
courts in these arenas, claiming that they can contribute to mobilization and dialogue
and, under certain conditions, to the advancement of the rights in question.3 Under what
conditions can courts in the democratic global south produce political and social change?
More specifically, why do some rulings have a significant impact on socioeconomic rights
while others have very little?
Scholars who claim that courts are inconsequential tend to have a narrow view of the
impact that judicial intervention can have. For example, Rosenberg focuses mostly on
policy change at a national level,4 while Ferraz and others emphasize negative externalities
and often discount the importance of symbolic and ideational change.5 Recent work has
criticized these approaches, underscoring the need to offer a more nuanced understanding
of impact that goes beyond compliance and stresses the multidimensionality of court
influence.6 Moreover, understanding judicial impact in new democracies requires looking
beyond the court itself as the sole agent of change. The central claim of this article is that
courts can be most consequential when they act in concert with other actors to create
political spaces for ongoing discussion and engagement with regards to rights.
In explaining judicial impact, I focus on the novel and understudied oversight
mechanisms that some assertive high courts have recently deployed to monitor adherence to
some of their most important rulings. These mechanisms include institutional innovations
such as follow-up committees, public hearings, and information requests. I argue that the use
of court-promoted oversight mechanisms can create institutional spaces, which I refer to
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as collaborative oversight arenas, where the court, elected leaders, private actors, and civil
society agents converge to address issues. The participation of external actors in such
venues, particularly of legally empowered civil society organizations, is crucial. When
civil society organizations are able to engage in these institutional spaces, one sees greater
information flows, the creation of mechanisms and spaces for accountability, policy
updates, and ideational change among bureaucrats and key actors. In short, via the
creation of collaborative oversight arenas, courts can become facilitators, or focal points,
that actors in society can use to coordinate and generate change.
In order to fully grasp the diverse effects of judicial intervention, my approach to
assessing judicial impact goes beyond compliance. As Kapiszewski and Taylor note,
compliance focuses on the “full execution of the action (or complete avoidance of the
action) called for (or prohibited) in one or more court rulings.”7 Impact is a broader,
more suitable concept. It is about both a) the actions taken as a result of a ruling and the
changes in ideas and discourse that it may trigger (what I call immediate effects), as well
as b) whether these have an effect on the conditions of the target population (what I call
rights effectiveness). My research contributes to a growing literature that seeks to
explain the “on the ground” consequences of judicial decision-making, and adds to our
understanding of the processes whereby courts become effective enforcers of rights, a
central aspect of democratization.
The analysis focuses on comparative case studies of two landmark socioeconomic
rights cases handed down by one of Latin America’s most rights activist tribunals:
Argentina’s Supreme Court. Paired case studies, used in conjunction with a strong
within-case inferential strategy, can furnish rich comparative insights—particularly
when it comes to theory development and specifying causal mechanisms.8 If one is
skeptical that courts can produce much impact, structural socioeconomic rights cases
(those that deeply affect public policy) are ideal cases to examine. These cases are
politically charged decisions that challenge the status quo in a specific policy area and
are least likely to have greater impact. Thus, they are excellent critical cases for theories
of compliance and impact. The first case is Causa Mendoza, an environmental ruling
that seeks to clean up and preserve the Matanza-Riachuelo river basin. The second case
is Defensor del Pueblo v. Chaco, a decision safeguarding the rights of the Qom
indigenous group. I rely on process tracing within each case, showing how a
collaborative oversight arena contributed to the Mendoza case’s greater impact than the
case of Chaco, where no collaborative oversight arena was present. Within each case, I
compare the differences in the situations before and after the court’s decision and trace
the role that judicial intervention played in explaining each outcome. Although rights
effectiveness does not hinge solely on judicial intervention in the form of a court ruling
(many factors can determine the extent to which a right is realized for any particular
population), looking at the two processes side by side allows me to glean insights by
tracing the positive impact that a collaborative oversight arena had in Mendoza and the
comparatively negative impact the absence of a collaborative oversight arena had in Chaco.
More broadly, the study of collaborative oversight arenas offers a unique window
into the politics of compliance and judicial impact. Scholarly work on impact has two
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limitations—a reductionist view of impact and a failure to acknowledge the importance

of the ongoing politics of compliance—both of which are exposed in the present study.
On the one hand, a reductionist view of impact often limits the phenomenon to
compliance or to a single dimension, painting a partial picture. My research confirms
and builds on recent research that suggests that impact is complex and focusing on
direct effects is not enough.9 On the other hand, seminal work like Rosenberg’s assumes
politics are static—his framework takes for granted that the preferences of political
elites will remain unchanged by the processes following judicial victories. More
recently, however, comparative scholars have qualified this view, highlighting the importance
of publicity and information after the rulings in fostering accountability and compliance.10
Yet, they do not explore the mechanisms that make greater visibility and information work.
My analysis suggests that greater impact stems from greater visibility, accompanied by more
information, resources, and access to the state; it also indicates that the preferences of legal
and political elites can be changed through their participation in commonly shared
political spaces in the aftermath of the ruling. In short, this article shows that post-
decision politics are crucial for producing significant impact in complex cases.

Explaining Judicial Impact

Existing explanations of judicial impact tend to focus on one of three different elements:
the court’s agency, the role of litigants, or the electoral incentives of elites. Court-
centered approaches see the court as the agent driving change.11 However, centering on
the elements under the court’s purview overestimates what courts can do alone,
downplaying the importance of the social and political coalitions that can build around
the court and work with it to magnify effects.12 Litigant-centered explanations, like
Epp’s,13 by contrast, focus primarily on the role of legally empowered social
organizations in securing the decisions, following up with their implementation, or
promoting other effects. This scholarship provides a partial picture since actual
implementation and impact cannot be secured through the presence of an organized
legal constituency alone: their mobilization is not enough to shift the status quo, and
although important, it may be muted by other powerful actors. Organized civil society
actors are more often than not, by definition, outside or at the fringes of the institutional
spaces where decisions are made. Civil society actors need access and leverage to get to
these spaces.14 According to Wilson and Cordero, the work of these actors needs to be
understood in its institutional and political contexts, which determine the ease of access
and the possibilities for fruitful engagement.15 I bridge the court-centered and litigant-
centered approaches by examining how the deployment of monitoring mechanisms can
create collaborative oversight arenas where civil society organizations, government
control agencies, and the court converge to create change.
Lastly, politically-centered arguments contend that judicial rulings on social policy
will be “hollow hopes” unless there is a favorably predisposed governmental elite
for whom the ruling’s implementation is electorally profitable.16 Although electoral
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incentives matter, elites are rarely monolithic: some bureaucrats or powerful agents
in the executive or congress may very well benefit from or agree with a court’s
intervention and act to support it. In this sense, the creation of collaborative oversight
arenas is a way in which, via pressure or ideational change, elites may be brought on
board with a ruling. As a result, my explanation is sensitive to the importance of elite
support, but looks at how this factor interacts with court-agency and social support
structures. While Gauri and Brinks have begun to study how courts interact with
different actors in civil society and other branches of government to effect sociopolitical
change,17 specifying the mechanisms through which judicial intervention produces
change is one of the pending tasks of this literature. In what follows, I demonstrate how
the configuration of a collaborative oversight arena contributes to such change.

The Role of Collaborative Oversight Arenas in Explaining Impact

How are collaborative oversight arenas configured and what are the mechanisms by
which they can contribute to change? Once a ruling is handed down, courts may initiate
sustained monitoring efforts over time. For example, they can request information from
the parties involved and hold public follow-up hearings. They may also create follow-up
commissions where they invite the targets of the decision, government units, and civil
society organizations to monitor compliance with the ruling and participate in oversight
efforts. These monitoring mechanisms have two kinds of effects: they impose costs on
the target(s) of the ruling, and they generate resources so that the court can offset
informational and power asymmetries.
First, in terms of imposing costs, by requiring reports and information on
implementation, as well as by setting deadlines, and doing so publicly, court-promoted
oversight furnishes some incentives for compliance.18 As Rodrı́guez Garavito shows,
monitoring can expose policy and implementation gaps, putting political pressure on the
targets.19 Public, institutionalized venues for discussion extract information from the
target(s) and draw the attention of both key actors related to the issue and actors beyond
those involved originally in the case: the public, the media, etc. Media coverage
generates attention at a broader level and increases political pressure since progress,
delays, and implementation gaps are exposed to a wide audience. Public exposure of
gaps or wrongs can function as an accountability mechanism, threatening public
officials and institutions with reputational or electoral consequences or with formal
sanctions.20 When monitoring efforts also include government oversight agencies, the
activation of these mechanisms is facilitated.
Second, monitoring also helps the court alleviate informational and power
asymmetries. Oversight generates information, which provides the court with
expertise—and the authority that comes with it—on specific technical topics and
produces input to inform the ongoing modification of court-mandated reforms to
facilitate compliance and maximize rights effectiveness. Oversight mechanisms offer
courts the chance to hear multiple actors and become aware of the broader policy arena
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as they monitor implementation. Beyond gaining more knowledge of the issue,

monitoring also shifts the distribution of power among the relevant actors. The court
comes in as an actor that players must reckon with. In turn, its presence empowers new
players (external oversight agencies, civil society organizations, etc.) by making them
part of monitoring venues and giving them new roles and a voice. In so doing, it creates
space for, and gives weight to, the actions and voices of actors that are often excluded
from institutional venues.
However, the tools directly under control of the courts are only part of the story. As
previous research on rights litigation shows, courts do not operate in a social or political
vacuum—civil society activity before, during, and after the decision can play a
significant role in the impact of the ruling.21 Organized and legally empowered groups
in civil society can exercise legal follow-up, use the ruling as precedent, mobilize
around the issue, and create external monitoring information. This mobilization can play
an important role in generating media attention and exerting pressure on implementing
agencies and other governmental actors. Moreover, as McCann and Keck have shown,
legal mobilization can facilitate the spread of rights rhetoric among activists themselves
and among key officials and other relevant actors.22 Overall, legally empowered civil
society organizations can be crucial to the creation of new understandings of rights that
are further spread through their mobilization efforts.23
Although civil society may produce some of these effects on its own, participating
in a collaborative oversight arena provides these organizations with sustained access to
the state and to other parties, opportunities to obtain and further diffuse information, and
to discuss and introduce their own policy ideas and proposals in other venues. This has
the potential to create synergy and feedback loops.
Collaborative oversight spaces promote the creation and flow of information.
Crucially, they also contribute to the spread of ideational effects both among actors
linked to the ruling as well as actors not directly involved in the ruling but crucial to its
implementation and outcome. As for those actors directly involved in the ruling, the
meetings, public hearings, and networks generated in the context of oversight arenas
create institutional spaces in which they come together. According to Langford, these
sustained interactions can alter the normative orientations, the taken for granted
assumptions, values, attitudes, and collectively shared expectations about problems and
their solutions, for litigants, their representatives, and for government agents and policy
makers.24 Collaborative oversight arenas can also generate the conditions for sustaining
a protracted interactive process that can contribute to the effective diffusion of policy
ideas and new cognitive paradigms among governmental actors.25 These interactions
can help diffuse the rights-based framework among those charged with designing policy
and implementation.
Ideational effects of this sort are not inconsequential. When it comes to substantially
altering the way things are done in a particular policy area in order to ensure higher
levels of rights effectiveness, it is essential to get decision-makers and government
officials to consider new policy ideas or to incorporate rights-based considerations in
their bureaucratic decision-making and in their cognitive frameworks. Eventually, this can
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change the very politics of an issue, so that courts are no longer needed to put and keep
the issue on the policy agenda. In short, a collaborative oversight arena substantially
reshapes the incentive structure facing the targets of a court order, empowers the
claimants to monitor compliance, and broadcasts their concerns to the population at
large, offering a powerful additional tool to social actors seeking to produce social
change through litigation.

Two Socioeconomic Rights Cases in Argentina

In this section, I present case studies of two rulings on socioeconomic rights handed
down by Argentina’s highest court. Although both are difficult policy cases, they have
different scopes of complexity. Causa Mendoza, where collaborative oversight was
deployed, poses a greater challenge when it comes to implementation. It aims for more
ambitious reform, calling on multiple levels of government, numerous private actors,
and different bureaucracies to coordinate around redressing and preventing an
environmental problem that affects millions and that had been building up for over a
century. Causa Chaco also strikes at the heart of a longstanding wrong—the socioeconomic
marginalization of the Qom—yet it compels fewer governmental units to action and
targets a smaller, more geographically contained population. Differences in scope aside,
process tracing within each case highlights how collaborative oversight contributed
to higher impact in the Mendoza case and exposes some of the weaknesses of an
enforcement system that lacks such a component, as in the Chaco case.

Cleaning up the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin The Matanza-Riachuelo winds

down the southern area of metropolitan Buenos Aires. More than six million people live
along its banks. It is severely contaminated by industrial waste and untreated sewage, as
well as by hundreds of open-air dumps.26 A multitude of administrative jurisdictions
converge and overlap along its course—fourteen municipalities, national and provincial
governments, and the City of Buenos Aires—which translates into paralysis, a historic
lack of attention to urban planning, and a near total absence of governmental attention to
the river’s deterioration or its social and environmental consequences. The Supreme
Court ruling came in response to a 2004 legal complaint for environmental damages
filed by residents of Villa Inflamable (one of the neighborhoods in the vicinity of
the petrochemical port on the river) and health workers from a public hospital. In it, the
Supreme Court ordered different levels of government to work towards the environ-
mental protection and recovery of the river basin by outlining concrete actions, general
objectives, and deadlines, leaving the specifics of how to meet these to the authorities.
In order to trace the impact of this decision, I disaggregate the dependent variable
into two broad sub-dimensions: immediate effects and rights effectiveness. To illustrate
the difference between both dimensions, picture a ruling that safeguarded the right to
health of the population living with AIDS by guaranteeing access to a certain
medication. This ruling might have a number of immediate effects: the reallocation of
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resources in order to buy medications, a series of regulatory reforms to institutionalize

the distribution of medications, and internal and external adaptations within patient
organizations as they seek to take advantage of the ruling. The ruling might also
produce immediate ideational and symbolic effects or develop new solutions: affected
actors might learn from the litigation, or the court’s use of a rights-based framework for
discussing the issue might change the discourse and interaction of litigants and
government officials. Still, there is no guarantee that all this change will actually
improve the situation of people on the ground. To account for this variable, one must
also measure rights effectiveness by assessing, for example, data on mortality and
morbidity among the relevant population in the years following the ruling.
Causa Mendoza spurred immediate noteworthy effects in comparison to the status
quo prior to the ruling. Notably, it prompted the creation of a new governmental
institution focused exclusively on the river basin where none existed before. To comply
with the court’s order, a 2006 legislative decision led to the creation ACUMAR
(Autoridad de la Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo), a public body with funding and the
mandate to execute the cleanup. As Gutiérrez and Merlinsky suggest,27 and my
discussions with experts and government officials in different municipalities confirm,
ACUMAR increasingly functioned as the much-needed mechanism for inter-jurisdictional
coordination of environmental policy in the river basin (formulating a common plan for
the management of solid waste, for example) and as a source of resources for the
environmental offices in the different municipalities.28
Beyond new institutions, the ruling also prompted the allocation of new resources
for cleanup efforts, for an industrial reconversion program, and for water and sewage
networks as well as the passing of new environmental regulations. Existing resources
were also reallocated to support programs in local environmental agencies. Critically,
Causa Mendoza also put the environmental conditions of the river basin front and center
in the local and the national political arena, making it a policy priority. Finally, it
enhanced the capacities of the civil society organizations tasked with oversight, giving
them access to institutional forums they lacked before and enhancing their resources.
Some argue that these changes are mere window dressing and that, ultimately, the
ruling has left the status quo undisturbed.29 What does the evidence suggest in this
regard? In terms of rights effectiveness, although there are significant improvements in
sewage coverage and access to water, contamination in the river persists. Does this
mean the ruling should be seen as inconsequential? This assessment is inaccurate for
several reasons. First, it discounts the progress that has been made in different areas. As
one environmental expert put it: “It is a fact that there is a before and an after the Court.
More has gotten done in the last four years than in the previous two hundred.”30 The
policy changes, organizational changes, and the creation of new information about
environmental and health conditions in the area are generating concrete changes in the
environmental politics and in the living and environmental conditions, although the
latter are uneven and come more slowly. Furthermore, time is a tricky but necessary
component in this evaluation: the cleanup of England’s river Thames (similar in scope
and complexity) took over fifty years.31 The greatest challenge for the Matanza-Riachuelo
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lies in maintaining these efforts over time, to which the presence of a collaborative
oversight arena can contribute greatly.
Collaborative oversight is essential to understanding Causa Mendoza’s impact. The
Supreme Court relied on a combination of different institutional mechanisms to monitor
implementation. For example, a clerk has been assigned to the case alongside a team of
about fifteen individuals from different secretarı́as (sub-units) of the court. In addition
to its in-house team, the court delegated day-to-day oversight to a lower court judge in
the municipality of Quilmes.32 My interviews with environmental experts, rights
advocates, and government officers coincided in highlighting the ability of the Quilmes
judge to, as one interviewee described it, “clear bottlenecks.”33 Nowhere was this more
obvious than in getting ACUMAR off the ground. For the first two years after the
ruling, compliance with the most basic requirements set out by the court was minimal.34
2010 marked a turning point when the Quilmes judge fined the head of ACUMAR for
non-compliance. Follow-up public hearings, requests for progress reports, and setting
up an action plan succeeded in spurring the agency into action.35
The Supreme Court also created an external follow-up commission (called the
Cuerpo Colegiado) to help monitor compliance, comprised of the Defensor del Pueblo
(national ombudsman) and five NGOs. These organizations have roots and experience
in the area and with each other, including participation in a 2003 larger effort to
mobilize and call attention to the environmental crisis in the river.36 This follow-up
commission is the main contact point between the court and external civil society actors.
Participating in the court-promoted monitoring process gave these organizations
access to institutional spaces and furthered an organizational process around environ-
mental concerns that was already underway in the basin. It did so by generating
opportunities for sustained interaction within an institutional setting and by giving
them new networks and access to public policy spaces. My interviews with different
members of this organization show that monthly meetings centered on monitoring the
ruling’s implementation, but also went beyond, furthering the work of each of their
NGOs and generating joint activities. These activities include, for instance, analysis of
the monthly water and air data, and using industrial contamination data for a crowd-sourced
monitoring platform developed and maintained with the local communities (Que Pasa
Riachuelo).
The Supreme Court and the Quilmes judge relied on reports and feedback from the
Cuerpo Colegiado to inform their monitoring decisions and update policy. For instance,
the Cuerpo Colegiado and the University of Buenos Aires were asked to weigh in on the
first draft of the master cleanup plan for the Matanza-Riachuelo. University experts were
critical,37 and in subsequent follow-up hearings, the Cuerpo Colegiado continued to
voice concerns at newer versions. ACUMAR had to respond to these criticisms by
updating the plan on various occasions. Since late 2008, the Cuerpo Colegiado has also
continually insisted on the need for different and better indicators to monitor process,
progress, and results of water contamination levels, which has led ACUMAR to change
some of its indicators and regulations for the type and amounts of substances that
industries can dispose of in the river.38
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Another avenue for the flow of information and the promotion of accountability are
the yearly follow-up hearings held by the Supreme Court in which all the parties involved
publicly present reports and updates and answer questions. Different clerks who worked
with Causa Mendoza inside the court described the hearings and the information that the
court received before and after them (via reports) as crucial for arriving at a sense of what
was really going on and, for certain topics, necessary for processing information on an
issue in which the court has no technical expertise. One clerk described the input and
reports from the Cuerpo Colegiado as “helpful to the court in evaluating its own
objectives . . . [and beyond that] a useful [social] thermometer.”39 A more senior clerk,
who supervised the team within the court, highlighted the following:

[The Cuerpo Colegiado] made important contributions to this monitoring process in terms
of [providing] information. Particularly in sensitive topics like housing, trash, and public
health. [. . .] Decrypting the information we receive can sometimes be extremely hard.40

The flow of information from external actors into the oversight process can also
generate a feedback loop. In other words, this is not just about the court receiving
written reports that are evaluated based on criteria set in stone. The interaction among
different actors makes possible a continuous and more participatory monitoring process
that is akin to the experimentalist remedies examined by Sabel and Simon.41 In both
cases, perpetual updating and revision is required. In addition, courts open up a process
of experimentation and work with actors to define the terms of compliance, rather than
force adherence to a pre-established set of fixed criteria.
A good example through which one can see this process at work is the case of the
relocation of thousands of families along the river basin. Cleaning the river’s towpath
(35 meters on both sides) required the relocation of thousands of families from their
current homes to new neighborhoods. In some cases (e.g., the neighborhoods Villa 21
and 24), the relocations were also envisioned as necessary to improving the living and
health conditions of families that inhabited contaminated areas. The implementation of
relocations presented serious obstacles and provides an excellent example of an instance
in which monitoring opened the possibility for the court to update policy as it was
implemented. It is also a process in which the importance of the role played by civil
society actors in bridging the gap between the court (and other instances of government)
and those affected is very clear.
In 2011, the first relocations brought complaints from the community—some of
who reached out to legal aid organizations. Their lawyers recounted to me serious
problems: procedures conducted through arbitrary means, without proper notification,
without consulting the inhabitants, and, occasionally, people were moved into living
quarters that were not even suitable for habitation. 42 Pressure from these organizations
resulted in the Quilmes judge issuing a resolution in February 2011 in which he signaled
there was a problem with relocations and a need for authorities to be mindful of the
social consequences. Over the next two years, a protocol on how to conduct relocations
was discussed, and some of the municipalities set up venues in which inhabitants could
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be informed of and participate in the relocation decisions (Mesas de Trabajo). Not all of
the municipalities had these, or if they did, not all of them were successful or taken
seriously by the local administrations. Discontent continued and further mobilization
resulted in reaching out to the Cuerpo Colegiado and a meeting with one of the justices
before the yearly follow-up hearing held in the Supreme Court in late 2012. At this
hearing, Cuerpo Colegiado brought up the problems, and members of the community
were present to forcefully voice their concerns.
In direct response to these moves, a few months later in December, the Supreme
Court issued a resolution that was seen as an important and positive step forward by all
the lawyers that I interviewed who had worked closely with inhabitants subject to
relocations. In essence, as a result of the information that the court received, the Court
changed the way the relocations were being conducted, putting in place safeguards for
the inhabitants. The Court defined standards for participation of the neighbors in the
legal process, something which they did not have before, as they lacked legal standing.
It also established minimum standards that new homes had to meet before people were
asked to move into them.
In the case of relocations as in other instances, through their reports to the court and
in hearings, civil society organizations and other independent government agencies
influenced the oversight process and the decisions that the court and other actors made
as they monitored implementation. Civil society organizations provided information to
the court, enhancing its technical capacity but, more generally, widening its view. This
is an illustration of the feedback loop to the court and the type of tweaking and updating
of implementation that can happen as a result of contact with and responsiveness to the
broader social context.
Aside from promoting the flow of information, accountability, and increased
possibilities for feedback and updating, a collaborative oversight arena can also magnify
ideational effects. Activists, government officials, and environmental experts coincided
in highlighting the fact that the court’s intervention put the Matanza-Riachuelo and
environmental topics, more generally, front and center in the national political agenda.43
The secretary of the environment in one of the affected municipalities illustrates this
point: “[The ruling] gave great importance to environmental issues on a national and
social level. [. . .] [This is crucial because] if it is not in the public agenda, no one cares
about it.”44 The ruling was similarly described as a precedent that would shape future
decisions by lawyers and bureaucrats with no direct stake in it. The case was on their
radar, and their reactions are exemplified by those of a high-ranking lawyer and public
official who volunteered: “Causa Mendoza put environmental rights at the center [of
politics at the national level].”45
These ideational changes had local ramifications. At the bureaucratic provincial
level, the newfound hierarchy and resources given to environmental units and the
existence of ACUMAR resulted in the creation and entrenchment of a layer of
government officials conversant in and working for environmental rights, with
resources. All the secretaries of environment that I interviewed saw their positions
and proposals empowered, if not newly created, in the context of continued oversight of
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the ruling. What the entrenchment of the environmental rights discourse and professionals
in the area can mean is well captured by the statements of Beatriz Mendoza, a health
professional in Avellaneda who was among those who filed the original claim: “There
have been tremendous gains in the many years I have been working on this topic . . .
before, when you talked to people about contamination, people laughed at you and did not
believe what you were saying.”46 In short, the continued process of monitoring that
followed the ruling helped environmental rights discourse make inroads.
The court’s intervention gave political importance to the issue among key actors,
but its sustained and collective monitoring increased its visibility beyond the litigants
and those who were already mobilizing around the issue. An indicator of this is news
coverage of the Matanza-Riachuelo. Figure 1 graphs the number of monthly news
pieces that three main national newspapers in Argentina (El Cları́n, Página 12, and La
Nación) ran on environmental issues pertaining to the river starting in 2004, two years
before the court took the case. Coverage of the Riachuelo basin was very low in the two
years prior to the ruling, reaching a total of eighteen and six yearly pieces in 2004 and
2005, respectively. Starting in mid-2006, when the court took the case, news coverage
of the river increased dramatically to a total of 205 that year alone and has shown a
sustained upward trend. Interestingly, if one maps some of the key events that followed
the court’s initial foray into the Matanza-Riachuelo—events that are directly associated

Figure 1 Monthly Printed News Coverage Causa Mendoza and Causa Chaco

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with the decision to exercise follow-up over time—we see that other peaks in the news
cycle correspond to initiatives like the holding of yearly public follow-up hearings. This
suggests that the sustained and increased media attention to the topic may well be
related to the court’s own sustained engagement with the issue.
The previous pages have highlighted the multifaceted impact spurred by the
configuration of a collaborative oversight arena in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s
decision in Causa Mendoza: noteworthy immediate effects (in terms of material
resources, policy reform, and ideational change) as well as advances in terms of rights
effectiveness. I now turn to a case where no collaborative oversight arena was set up.

Defensor del Pueblo v Chaco The second case under study looks at the Supreme
Court’s pronouncement seeking to safeguard the rights of Qom indigenous people in the
Chaco province. In mid-2007, the dire humanitarian conditions of the Qom in the
forested area known as El Impenetrable made national news with headlines such as:
“Ethnic Genocide in El Impenetrable”; “In a month, hunger killed five in El Impene-
trable”; and “Humanitarian disaster.”47 Longstanding difficult socioeconomic condi-
tions in the area fueled the proliferation of preventable diseases (like chagas disease and
tuberculosis), malnourishment, lack of water, and basic sanitary services. The Qom are
the second largest indigenous group in Argentina with a population of roughly 60,000,
and they inhabit regions of the provinces of Chaco and Formosa. Their situation in El
Impenetrable is aggravated by difficult conditions in Chaco more generally. In recent
years, this province has consistently ranked as the lowest in human development in-
dicators on a national level. In September 2007, the Defensor requested that the federal
and provincial governments be ordered to take the necessary measures that would
improve the living conditions of the indigenous people who were being “silently,
progressively, systematically, and inevitably exterminated.”48
The Supreme Court quickly granted an injunction in response to the Defensor’s
claim, ordering the provision of water and food as well as transportation to health
centers for the Qom in Impenetrable. It also requested that the provincial and national
government inform it of the measures being taken in regard to health, education,
housing, and living condition programs in the area.
Given that the humanitarian crisis had been building up in El Chaco for some time
without any attention from the provincial government, it is not a stretch to suggest that
inaction might have continued. The court’s intervention marked an important difference
when compared to the prior situation: as I show below, it triggered the devolution of
resources and prompted actions that made a significant difference in the conditions of a
very marginalized community. However, the lack of institutionalized space for
collaborative monitoring in Chaco can help explain the ruling’s relatively low visibility
and the lack of instances for rights-based policy learning by government officials.
Before turning to an explanation of the process in the aftermath of the court’s decision, I
provide a brief overview of decision’s impact.
In terms of immediate effects, the court’s pronouncement was directly linked to a
flow of financial and human resources into the area. The ruling breathed new life into
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long-standing plans to extend water service and resulted in the building of a major
hospital and the strengthening of already existing assistance programs. A member of the
Ombudsman’s team described the immediate effect of the court’s intervention in the
following terms: “Plans to build the aqueduct had circulated for the last fifty years. But
[because of the court] they were accelerated.”49 The ruling also served as precedent to
seek the judicial enforcement of the rights of other indigenous groups in Argentina,
particularly those in the Santuario Tres Pozos area in Jujuy and the Qom Navogoh in
Formosa. Finally, this ruling (along with others) contributed to an ongoing ideational
transformation within the Office of the Ombudsman, whereby this institution has begun
working with and on behalf of pueblos originarios from a rights-based perspective, as I
will discuss in more detail below.
In terms of rights effectiveness, when one compares the situation before and after
the ruling, the assessment of those who are deeply familiar with the situation in El
Impenetrable speaks of partial improvements. Conditions were so bleak when the court
intervened that the influx of even limited assistance was significant. The hospital that
was completed in 2010 saw more than 55,000 patients in 2012.50 However, a report by
the Defensor del Pueblo (2012) noted staffing difficulties and other challenges that
prevented the hospital from functioning at full capacity and integrating with rural health
center. The report also surveyed families in the municipalities that received the benefits,
all of whom reported receiving food assistance, pensions, and water (albeit at varying
rates). Although the ruling provided important and needed short-term relief, a long-term
solution is elusive. A member of a local NGO explained: “[The court’s decision]
alleviated the poverty that stems from a lack of income. [But, at present] the more
structural poverty only slightly . . . [it] remains largely intact.”51 The following
paragraphs analyze the aftermath of the Chaco ruling in order to trace the role of judicial
intervention in explaining the outcome and draw connections between the Chaco ruling
and Causa Mendoza in order to explore some important differences in the absence of a
collaborative oversight arena.
Collaborative oversight arenas are configured when institutional monitoring spaces
open up and external actors (key among them, civil society organizations) can engage
with the court. No such political space was present in Causa Chaco: the Supreme Court
did not promote monitoring mechanisms,52 and there is no dense web of associations
that have a stake in the well-being of the Qom, as there are in the cleanup of the
Matanza-Riachuelo river basin. Only one locally-based organization, the Centro
Mandela, was closely associated with the ruling. The Centro had been working for
months before the injunction to bring media attention to the crisis and collaborated with
the Ombudsman in preparing the legal claim. This advocacy was important and,
afterwards, so were its efforts to continue to draw attention to the area. However, the
Centro’s reach and its resources are limited: it is a small volunteer-based human rights
NGO working from Resistencia (the provincial capital). With limited access points to
the national-level government, which is heavily centralized in Buenos Aires, or to other
national venues like the media, the ability of this organization to do more is constrained
when compared to cases in which a denser network of organizations is mobilizing.
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A careful look at the process following the ruling shows that the changes that were
observed owe a lot to the work that the Ombudsman’s office did in the aftermath, as the
team took it upon itself to do basic follow-up on the implementation of the court’s
decision and thus generated some accountability and visibility. This agency generated
some pressure on the regional and national authorities through official channels in Buenos
Aires. They monitored the situation at a distance by reviewing news outlets and by
travelling to the region and producing reports. Their work is evidence of the importance of
semi-autonomous governmental institutions in bridging gaps with the state and following
up with rulings. However, the Defensor was physically removed from the everyday
realities of the Qom in Chaco. In this case, then, the bulk of the advocacy and engagement
was carried out by an independent government actor distanced from the beneficiaries,
which did not provide them access, and further disempowered them. We do not observe
the dynamics triggered by a collaborative oversight arena.
Setting up court-promoted monitoring could have entailed the creation of
institutionalized channels of communication through which the court could receive
external input on implementation from different actors and the creation of scenarios for
all those with a stake in the ruling to interact. No institutional access points to the court
and to the state (through meetings or committees) were created. Relatedly, the
opportunities that collaborative oversight can create to expose gaps in implementation,
generate broader exposure, and promote accountability by bringing in other oversight
agencies were largely absent. Following the Chaco ruling, there was no sustained
attention on the implementation process from the government or the public media at the
level that we saw in Causa Mendoza. Looking at national media coverage on the
situation of the Qom in El Impenetrable (see Figure 1), for example, the highest peak in
the series corresponds to August 2007, when the humanitarian crisis reached its zenith,
right before the court took the case (twenty articles were published). That year fifty-
eight articles total were published; after that, yearly printed media attention dwindles to
twenty-two, nineteen, and ten pieces, respectively. Eventually, the coverage dies out
completely, but not because the crisis was resolved.
The ruling’s limited ideational effects point in another significant direction. Several
of my interviewees agreed that the biggest obstacle to the full realization of the Qom’s
rights were persistent barriers to them being viewed as subjects of rights. The head of
the human rights team within the Ombudsman, put it as follows:

There is a discriminatory bias. [. . .] What continues to be a problem? [The lack of] a

framework to think of the indigenous as a subject of rights. We need to sensitize the police,
the judge, the person who works at the hospital. What’s happening today? That the person
on call at the hospital makes the indigenous person wait and sees to the criollos [white
people] first.53

Public policy that incorporates a rights-based perspective can contribute to rights

effectiveness, but officials and providers must incorporate it. The lack of awareness
regarding rights-based discourse among government officials and bureaucrats has very
real consequences, like the ones mentioned in the previous quote.
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This experience suggests that the ideational effects that rulings can trigger are not
merely inconsequential byproducts of judicial intervention in the enforcement of rights. The
importance of a rights-based perspective can be illustrated further by looking within the
Defensor itself and its own experience with becoming aware of and sensitized to indigenous
rights. It is telling to note that the Defensor had no specialized subunit focusing on pueblos
originarios in 2007 when this case started. In my interview with the head of their team, the
officer explained that an important part of the reason why the original legal claim on Chaco
was filed focusing on human rights, in general, and with no reference to indigenous rights,
was that their lawyers were not familiar with the latter: “At that time [2007] that framework
[indigenous rights], that sensibility, was very foreign to our lawyers here in Buenos
Aires.”54 As a result of the Ombudsman’s involvement in this case and similar ones, their
outlook on indigenous rights has changed dramatically. The head of the team continued:
“Now we have to do fieldwork, we have to think about the cultural dimension, and we have
to privilege consent and agreement with the indigenous people.”55 The ongoing
transformation that was triggered within the Defensor—which brought into perspective
pueblos originarios as special subjects of rights and shifted officers’ perspectives—is a
powerful one. But this shift needs to extend to other actors: if it happens among key
decision-makers and other bureaucratic agents, it can make important differences in terms of
policy design, implementation, and every-day interactions.
As we saw in the previous section, the diffusion of this type of ideational effect was
facilitated in the case of Causa Mendoza by the collaborative oversight arena: Sustained
interaction promoted the flow of ideas and greater visibility. Actors who prioritized
these issues (like local environmental officers) were given greater power. Finally, the
court held officials accountable for implementing policy in accordance with a rights-
based perspective. In the absence of such a space, ideational changes are circumscribed
to the Defensor in the Chaco case. There is no opportunity to observe some of the other
synergies present in Causa Mendoza: greater visibility, the repeated interaction among
different stakeholders in the issue, the diffusion of rights-based framework, or the
updating of policy. The Chaco ruling was not mere words on parchment, but the
weaknesses in its enforcement mechanism can be better understood when seen in light
of a case where a different approach was undertaken.

Conclusion

Under what conditions can courts in the democratic global south produce political and
social change? Collaborative oversight arenas—political spaces where organized
constituencies in civil society engage with court-promoted monitoring mechanisms—can
contribute to generating higher impact in structural cases. Drawing on the insights of
court-centered and litigant-centered approaches to explain judicial impact, my theory
suggests that the court is not so much the sole agent of change but rather a focal point
that can allow for the convergence and the activation of other actors in a larger process
of change.
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The findings of this study highlight how courts can be most effective (i.e., have
greater impact) when they act in concert with other actors. In Causa Mendoza, where
the Court was able to create spaces for interaction between itself, civil society
organizations, government organizations, and other external actors, the impact of its
ruling extended into many areas and was greater. In this context, different policy ideas
and ideational effects spread. The collaborative oversight arena also made possible
dynamics that put political pressure on targets for greater accountability and generated
information feedback loops that informed the court’s monitoring decisions thereby
allowing it to overcome informational deficiencies. My research suggests that the
creation of institutional avenues for participatory oversight can magnify what Smulovitz
and Peruzzoti have called societal accountability, giving civil society and watchdog
agencies more access to accountability venues and opportunities for exposing
problems.56 Collaborative oversight arenas shift the distribution of power and create
spaces for new players to enter the policy space and participate in the discussion.
Although collaborative oversight arenas are novel and not commonplace, they are
not the only way in which courts may act as coordination devices or create spaces for
political engagement. Court-promoted monitoring encompasses a variety of institutional
mechanisms that range from requesting reports, conducting follow-up via telephone (as
does Costa Rica’s court), or holding periodic hearings, to setting up a more formal
collaborative oversight arena. Oversight mechanisms are many, varied, and can also be
used in isolation. Their use can influence impact, and they deserve further study by
scholars of comparative judicial politics. In any case, this research also highlights the
need to study judicial intervention as part and parcel of ongoing policy debates, policy
learning, and political conflict—as Keck and Barnes also urge us to.57 Both Causa
Mendoza and Chaco are cases in point. Just to highlight the latter, the struggle for the
effectiveness of the rights of the Qom is not over and does not only hinge on the
Supreme Court. When courts walk into the political arena, they are not only
mechanisms of dispute resolution that issue a final solution; we should think of them as
coordination devices that can facilitate change by creating opportunities for the
interaction of different actors.
The findings also show that a multidimensional perspective on impact is crucial: In
contrast to previous research that has placed the biggest emphasis on the implementation
of rulings, my research illustrates that ideational effects are not simply inconsequential by-
products, but are actually central to the process of generating rights effectiveness and
broader political and social change. In the Chaco ruling, we clearly see how important
such change has been to the ombudsman’s office, and how its absence outside that realm
remains an obstacle to the realization of the Qom’s rights.
This research has a number of interesting implications for the comparative study of
courts. Rights activism of the kind in which the Argentine Supreme Court among others
(including the Indian, Colombian, and Costa Rican supreme courts) engages indicates
that courts in the global south are playing new roles. These courts are not only entering
new policy areas—like economic and social rights—but they are also developing new
tools—like monitoring mechanisms—to deal with these challenges. Most theories
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assume courts have a fixed set of areas of concern and a fixed set of capabilities. In the
global south, however, courts have been entrusted with new areas of concern, and they
are developing capabilities—in cooperation with civil society and governments—to
handle their new responsibilities. Examining how consequential these courts can be
suggests that scholars need to go beyond the classic adage to describe courts, “neither
the purse nor the sword,” which suggests a very limited array of options. These courts
are bringing the purse, the sword, and the people together, to draw attention to
longstanding problems and find solutions.
In the wake of growing judicial activism in the arena of rights, Hirschl has claimed
that courts have gone too far into public policy and that we are on the verge of
dangerous juristocracies.58 My findings address some of these concerns: courts are not
necessarily displacing politics or elected policy makers when they hand down activist
decisions. Instead, courts can enhance accountability and responsiveness on issues that
the constitution itself identifies as priorities. They are opening up political spaces where
they can act as facilitators and catalysts for change, while still allowing governments
and civil society to define and negotiate the terms.

NOTES

Fieldwork was made possible with support from the SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship and
a National Science Foundation DDRIG Grant. I am grateful to Juan Albarracı́n, Katherine Bersch, Daniel
Brinks, Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos, Scott Mainwaring, and anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback.

1. Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2008).
2. Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial
Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Octavio L. Ferraz, “Brazil: Health Inequalities, Rights, and
Courts: The Social Impact of The ‘judicialization of Health,’” in Alicia Ely Yamin and Siri Gloppen, eds., Litigating
Health Rights: Can Courts Bring More Justice to Health (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 76–102.
3. Michael McCann, Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization, Lan-
guage and Legal Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Varun Gauri and Daniel M. Brinks,
eds., Courting Social Justice: Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Thomas M. Keck, “Beyond Backlash: Assessing the Impact
of Judicial Decisions on LGBT Rights,” Law & Society Review, 43 (March 2009), 151–86.
4. Rosenberg.
5. Ferraz; Ran Hirschl and Evan Rosevear, “Constitutional Law Meets Comparative Politics: Socio-
Economic Rights and Political Realities,” in Tom Campbell, K. D Ewing, and Adam Tomkins, eds., The Legal
Protection of Human Rights: Sceptical Essays, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 207–28.
6. Siri Gloppen, “Litigating Health Rights: Framing the Analysis,” in Yamin and Gloppen, eds., 17–39;
César Rodrı́guez Garavito, “Beyond the Courtroom: The Impact of Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic
Rights in Latin America,” Texas Law Review 89, no. 7 (2011), 1669–98.
7. Diana Kapiszewski and Matthew M. Taylor, “Compliance: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and
Explaining Adherence to Judicial Rulings,” Law & Social Inquiry, 38 (September 2013), 803–35.
8. James Mahoney, “Strategies of Causal Assessment in Comparative Historical Analysis,” in James
Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 337–72.
9. César Rodrı́guez Garavito and Diana Rodrı́guez Franco, Radical Deprivation on Trial: The Impact of
Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic Rights in the Global South (New York: Cambridge University Press
2015); Gloppen.
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10. Varun Gauri, Jeffrey K. Staton, and Jorge Vargas Cullell, “The Costa Rican Supreme Court’s Com-
pliance Monitoring System,” The Journal of Politics, 77 (2015), 774–86; Georg Vanberg, “Legislative-
Judicial Relations: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Constitutional Review,” American Journal of Political
Science, 45 (April 2001), 346–61.
11. Garavito; Ferraz.
12. McCann; Keck, 2009.
13. Charles R. Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative
Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
14. Rosenberg; Charles F. Sabel and William H. Simon, “Destabilization Rights: How Public Law Liti-
gation Succeeds,” Harvard Law Review, 117 (February 2004), 1015–101.
15. Bruce M. Wilson and Juan Carlos Rodrı́guez Cordero, “Legal Opportunity Structures and Social
Movements The Effects of Institutional Change on Costa Rican Politics,” Comparative Political Studies, 39
(April 2006), 325–51.
16. Rosenberg; Hirschl and Rosevear.
17. Gauri and Brinks.
18. Gauri, Staton, and Cullell.
19. Garavito.
20. Catalina Smulovitz and Enrique Peruzzotti, “Societal and Horizontal Controls: Two Cases of a Fruitful
Relationship,” in Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Welna, eds., Democratic Accountability in Latin America
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 309–31.
21. Epp; Stuart Wilson, “Litigating Housing Rights in Johannesburg’s Inner City: 2004–2008,” South
African Journal of Human Rights, 27 (January 2011), 127–51.
22. McCann; Thomas M. Keck, Judicial Politics in Polarized Times (Chicago: University Of Chicago
Press, 2014).
23. Reva B. Siegel, “Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The
Case of the De Facto Era,” California Law Review, 94 (2006), 1323–419.
24. Malcolm Langford, “Housing Rights Litigation: Grootboom and Beyond,” in Malcolm Langford, Ben
Cousins, Jackie Dougard, and Tshepo Madlingozi, eds., Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or
Substance? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 187–225.
25. Sabel and Simon; Diane Stone, “Non-Governmental Policy Transfer: The Strategies of Independent
Policy Institutes,” Governance, 13 (January 2000), 45–70.
26. Andres Napoli, “Una Polı́tica de Estado Para El Riachuelo,” Informe Ambiental Anual, Buenos Aires:
FARN, 2009.
27. “En Los Confines de La Polı́tica Ambiental: Gestión Municipal Y Articulación Interjurisdiccional En
La Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires,” in X Congreso Nacional de Ciencia Polı́tica Argentina (Córdoba,
2011).
28. Interview with environmental expert, Buenos Aires, November 30, 2012; Interview with subsecretary
of environment B, Buenos Aires Province, February 14, 2013; Interview with subsecretary of environment A,
Buenos Aires Province, February 8, 2013; Interview with secretary of environment C, Buenos Aires Province,
March 8, 2013; Interview with subsecretary of public works (in charge of environmental issues), Buenos Aires
Province, February 22, 2013.
29. Roberto Gargarella, “Deliberative Democracy, Dialogic Justice and the Promise of Social and Eco-
nomic Rights,” in Helena Alviar Garcı́a, Karl E Klare, and Lucy A Williams, eds., Social and Economic Rights
in Theory and Practice: Critical Inquiries (New York: Routledge, 2015), 105–20; Mariela Puga, Litigio y
Cambio Social en Argentina y Colombia (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2012).
30. Interview with member A of the Causa Mendoza follow-up commission (Cuerpo Colegiado from now
on), Buenos Aires, November 27, 2012.
31. Martin J Attrill, A Rehabilitated Estuarine Ecosystem: The Environmentand Ecology of the Thames
Estuary (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998).
32. In 2012, this Judge was separated from the process by the Supreme Court following corruption
accusations. The Court reconfigured the oversight system delegating day-to-day follow-up to two municipal
tribunals in December 2012. My fieldwork and analysis stop shortly after this announcement, which marks a
new phase in the process.
33. Interview with member B of the Cuerpo Colegiado, Buenos Aires, December 3, 2012; Interview with
member C of the Cuerpo Colegiado, Buenos Aires, December 18, 2012; Interview with member D of the
Cuerpo Colegiado, November 28, 2012; Interview with member A of the Cuerpo Colegiado; Interview with
subsecretary of environment B, Buenos Aires Province, February 14, 2013.
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34. Andres Napoli and Javier Garcia Espil, “Riachuelo: Hacer Hoy Pensando En La Cuenca Del Ma~nana,”
Informe Ambiental Anual (FARN, 2011); CELS, “En Busca de Soluciones Judiciales Para Mejorar La Calidad
de Vida de Los Habitantes de La Cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo,” in Derechos Humanos En Argentina: Informe
2009 (Buenos Aires: CELS: Siglo XXI, 2009), 333–58.
35. Interview with member C of the Cuerpo Colegiado, Buenos Aires, December 18, 2012.
36. Maria Gabriela Merlinsky, Atravesando El Rio: La Construcción Social y Polı́tica de la Cuestión
Ambiental en Argentina, Ph.D. dissertation (Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires /
Paris 8, 2009).
37. Interview with member of the Universidad de Buenos Aires team. Buenos Aires, November 10, 2012.
38. Interview with member B of the Cuerpo Colegiado; Interview with member A of the Cuerpo
Colegiado.
39. Interview with secretario letrado 35, Buenos Aires, March 13, 2013.
40. Interview with secretario letrado 32, Buenos Aires, March 13, 2013.
41. Sabel and Simon.
42. Interview with lawyer Defensorı́a de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, February 4,
2013; Interview with lawyer ACIJ, Buenos Aires, November 23, 2012; Interview with lawyer Defensorı́a de la
Nación, February 7, 2013. See also ACIJ’s “Villa Inflamable: Donde Comenzó El Caso ‘Mendoza’ Los
Derechos Siguen Esperando” (Buenos Aires, 2012).
43. Interview with secretary of environment C, Buenos Aires Province, March 8, 2013; Interview with
subsecretary of environment B, Buenos Aires Province, February 14, 2013; Interview with member D of the
Cuerpo Colegiado; Interview with member A of the Cuerpo Colegiado; Interview former director of legal
services and human rights NGO, March 12, 2013.
44. Interview with secretary of environment C.
45. Interview with former director of legal services and human rights NGO, Buenos Aires, March 12,
2013.
46. Beatriz Mendoza in interview with Fundación Metropolitana, July 2012. On file with author.
47. “Genocidio étnico” en El Impenetrable,” Pg/12, May 21, 2007. “En un mes el hambre mató en El
Chaco a cinco personas,” La Nación, August 3, 2007. “Desastre humanitario,” Pg/12, August 8, 2007.
48. “Mondino denunció el exterminio de Tobas en el Chaco,” Perfil, August 29, 2007.
49. Interview with member of the Human Rights Area of the Defensor del Pueblo de la Nación (DPN),
Buenos Aires, March 18, 2013.
50. “El Hospital del Bicentenario de Castelli atendió a más de 55 mil pacientes en 2012,” Diario Norte,
Jan. 18, 2013.
51. Interview with director of Centro Mandela, March 20, 2014.
52. The court has held hearings to listen to the provincial and national government on the programs they
have ongoing in the region, but there is no monitoring over time, no periodic reporting, and no institutional
spaces where the court, the targets of the ruling, and civil society organizations can interact.
53. Interview with member of the Human Rights Area of the DPN, Buenos Aires, March 18, 2013.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Smulovitz and Peruzzotti.
57. Keck, 2014; Jeb Barnes, “In Defense of Asbestos Tort Litigation: Rethinking Legal Process Analysis
in a World of Uncertainty, Second Bests, and Shared Policy-Making Responsibility,” Law & Social Inquiry,
34 (March 2009), 5–29.
58. Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

187