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New Book by Government Professor Daniel Brinks

Daniel Brinks

UT Department of Government professor Daniel Brinks recently published The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law with Cambridge University Press.

Brinks, who teaches courses on comparative judicial politics, democracy and democratization, and Latin American politics, holds a Ph.D. from Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Michigan. He finished the book during his tenure as a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame in 2006–2007, in conjunction with the project “Law and Rights in Developing Countries: The Impact of Legal Strategies on Social and Economic Rights.”



The book draws on extensive fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and presents comparative data on the prevalence of police killings and on the success of prosecutions of police officers accused of murder in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, São Paulo, Salvador, and Uruguay. He documents the corrosive effect of social inequality on judicial functioning, as well as the impact of political support and institutional design. Throughout the text, Brinks highlights the extent to which democratic politics remain incomplete without protection of core civil rights.

Terence C. Halliday of the University of Illinois College of Law says, “This book establishes grounds for a long overdue rapprochement between comparative politics and sociolegal scholarship. It is essential reading for specialists on all countries where the struggle for basic legal freedoms continues unabated."