Pereira's new book is a fascinating comparison of the legal systems of the military dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. It focuses on the concept of “authoritarian legality,” which at first seems to be an oxymoron. As the book unfolds, however, and the differences among the regimes' legal strategies become clear, the usefulness of the concept becomes apparent. This book highlights the importance of the legal dimension of authoritarian regimes, thereby providing important new insights into the nature of both authoritarianism and judicial systems. A broadly comparative chapter also extends the argument to Nazi Germany, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and the United States after 9/11.

The main argument is that the historical relationship between the military and the judiciary influence the military's choice of legal strategy for carrying out repression. Where there was greater consensus and integration between the judiciary and the military prior to the onset of authoritarianism, there was greater reliance on courts to try political prisoners. Where there was less consensus and integration, repression was more likely to take place outside of any type of legal structure. Moreover, the judicialization of repression tended to moderate political repression, and the legal strategy of the military regime had important implications for the transition to democracy and the authoritarian legacies that shaped the new democracies.

In Brazil's dictatorship, political repression was highly judicialized. The Argentine military regime of 1976–83, by contrast, relied almost exclusively upon extrajudicial political repression, largely through “disappearances.” Chile's military regime occupied a middle position, with some judicialization, but also a significant level of extrajudicial repression. To quantify this level of judicialization, Pereira presents a particularly telling statistic: the ratio of political prisoners tried in military courts to those killed extrajudicially. In Brazil, the figure is 23:1, as compared to Chile 1.5:1 and Argentina 1:71 (see Table 2.1, p. 21). These different levels of legality were the result, according to Pereira, of varying degrees of consensus, integration, and cooperation between the military and the judiciary.

Perhaps the most useful contribution of this book is the basic information it provides about the largely overlooked institutions of authoritarian judiciaries. Pereira skillfully details the legal strategies of these three regimes. The level of legal continuity from before the coups is striking in the cases of Chile and Brazil. Much of their legal strategy relied upon laws written by previous governments, what Pereira refers to as a “prior legality.” The book also presents extensive data on the political trials carried out in Chile and Brazil, including acquittal rates, professional background of defendants, and sentences of those convicted.

The comparison between Brazil's gradualist and conservative approach to legality and Argentina's almost complete repudiation of legality presents clear evidence of the variation among authoritarian approaches to legality, and the importance of military-judicial consensus and integration as a key causal variable. Pereira's characterization of Chile as an intermediate case, however, is more problematic. There seems to have been extraordinary consensus between the military and the judiciary in the case of Chile, beginning with the Supreme Court's combative approach to the Allende administration, followed by its complete disregard for the military's abuse of power. In fact, the judiciary in Chile seems to have been even more cooperative than in Brazil, considering that the Chilean Supreme Court refused to review the decisions of the military courts even though it had legal authority to do so. The Brazilian judiciary, by contrast, actually challenged the military leaders by overturning the sentences of some political prisoners. Pereira's argument may also understate the importance of the opposition's strength and the military's relative weakness in Argentina as compared to Brazil, but the overall emphasis on the historical institutional relationship between the judiciary and the military as a dominant causal factor is clearly important.

Future research could fruitfully examine the intraregime variation in the application of the law. Within a regime, what explains why some political opponents are tried in courts while others are dealt with extrajudicially? Chile would provide an interesting case because it tried similar numbers of political opponents in military courts as it killed extrajudicially. A comparison of those who were disappeared versus those who were tried in military courts could shed even more light on regime incentives and the nature of authoritarian legality.

If the main purpose of history and comparative politics is to shed light on contemporary issues and provide a context for understanding the challenges our own government faces, then this book surely succeeds. The book provides a haunting reminder of the dangers of a shadowy “War on Terror.” As the book details these regimes' decisions to employ military courts versus disappearances, it is hard not to contemplate our own executive's decisions to unilaterally define people as “unlawful combatants” and make use of military courts and extrajudicial “renditions” in its fight against terrorism. The parallels between the United States' current war on terrorism and the Southern Cone's earlier fights against “terrorism” are at times striking. Pereira makes the comparison explicit in the final substantive chapter of the book. He argues that in democracies, judicial-military conflict, rather than cooperation, likely will serve to protect individual liberties.