Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Rule of law crumbles — again — in Latin America
Rule of law crumbles — again — in Latin America
Apr 26, 2025 12:56 AM

It’s no secret that most of Latin America has struggled for a long time with the idea, habits, and practices of rule of law. When one consults rankings such as the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom (which measures for rule of law), it’s a depressing picture, despite notable exceptions like Chile.

There are many reasons for this. Among others, they include a deep long-standing distrust of formal institutions which pervades many Latin American societies as well as the fact that Latin American populists have always regarded rule of law as obstructing their political and economic agendas—agendas that have produced even more dysfunctionality in their wake. Hence, Latin American caudillos of all stripes, ranging from Argentina’s Juan Perón in the past to Bolivia’s Evo Morales in the present, have consistently derided rule of law as a “bourgeois” institution.

Then there is the prevalence of widespread indifference on the part of many ordinary Latin Americans to rule of law. When I have spoken about rule of law while lecturing in countries ranging from Mexico to Argentina, I have witnessed a great deal of shrugging of the shoulders in response from well-educated audiences.

Perhaps that’s because establishing rule of law—let alone preserving it—just isn’t very easy. For rule of law goes beyond adherence to formal procedures. It also requires a widespread and consistent embrace of very specific norms and principles on the part of the population and those who make and administer law.

An excellent summary of these norms and principles was delineated by the twentieth century legal scholar, Lon Fuller, in his important 1964 book The Morality of Law. Part of his argument was that rule of law itself depends upon acceptance of a type of inner morality concerning basic fairness—something that Latin American populists and their enablers have never shown much interest in, especially if it conflicts with the Marxist sentiments that are just beneath the surface of a good deal of political and intellectual life throughout the region.

A recent egregious example of the type of problems encountered by rule of law in Latin America was highlighted by Mary Anastasia O’Grady in a recent Wall Street Journal article. Entitled “The President of Peru Stages a Coup,” O’Grady illustrates how Peru’s President, Martín Vizcarra, has just dissolved the Congress and set new elections for January 2020. He did so in clear violation of Peru’s Constitution. This states that the government may only dissolve Congress after two no-confidence votes. There has been only one vote of no-confidence during this government’s term, and that dates back to 2017.

O’Grady’s article provides an excellent overview of the particularities of the dispute. But she also demonstrates how the president’s clearly unconstitutional act is now fueling demands on the part of leading members of Peru’s hard left for the same type of process that lead to Venezuela’s left-populists consolidating their power and now dictatorship over that very troubled nation.

What makes this situation even sadder is that Peru has made, as O’Grady underscores, considerable economic progress since the late 1990s, including with regard to important institutional prerequisites for sustained economic development such as respect for private property. The problem is that violations of a presumably just constitution can’t help but reinforce skepticism among the political class and citizenry more generally about rule of law.

In the long-term, the rich and powerful can always take themselves in a situation of degenerating rule of law. The middle class and poor, however, cannot. They are the real losers in a situation of degenerating rule of law. We can hope that Peru doesn’t have to find this out the hard way. I wish that I was optimistic, but I’m not.

Image: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved