The sub-title of this book, Inequality and the Rule of Law, refers to two enduring weaknesses that continue to beset most Latin American and many other new democracies (as well as not a few older ones): persistent inequality and the weak hold of the rule of law. How the former impinges on the latter is the central question Brinks seeks to answer and he does so by analysing the judicial response to one of the most egregious human rights violations still disturbingly common in Latin America, illegal police killings. His study draws on the insights of Guillermo O'Donnell, to whom he acknowledges a deep intellectual debt, as indeed must all scholars of democratisation and the quality of democracy, and seeks to offer a more nuanced and grounded explanation for the precise effects of inequality on the rule of law and the protection of basic human rights (in this case, the right to life) in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. In this he succeeds handsomely.

The starting point for this study is the assumption that in order for a claim of rights to become effective, it is necessary to overcome the resistance of those on whom such rights place a burden. Of course, in the cases under consideration here, the right to life has been irrevocably violated and a court decision can at best establish ex post the illegality of the police action; only indirectly, then, can we speak of a claim of rights becoming effective. Brinks justifies his focus on such cases on the convincing ground of their measurability: police killings are more visible than other routine forms of abuse and the available data are amenable to the comparative analysis he undertakes to such telling effect. Moreover, establishing legal accountability for rights violations, even ex post, should help to discourage such violations from occurring in the future, as Brinks' evidence also suggests. Less convincing is the indicator chosen to measure ‘legal effectiveness’ – convictions of police officers. Where convictions do occur, they are frequently for far lesser crimes than homicide and entail short suspended sentences, even where the facts of the case point to the deliberate unlawful killing of an unarmed civilian. Whether such results can be taken to establish legal effectiveness seems questionable (certainly, relatives of the victims of police violence regard them as farcical); taking this into account, the performance of the legal systems under consideration in this book is even more dismal than Brinks' analysis suggests.

The outcome of this conflict between those claiming rights and those resisting such a claim depends in large part, Brinks contends, on the resources available to the parties, be these material, social, educational or other forms of capital. In seeking redress in cases of police violence, victims are at a disadvantage in that they typically lack such resources. This gives the police an immense advantage as they are virtual monopoly providers of the factual information on which the courts rely, and they can and do frequently intimidate witnesses, plant false evidence and contaminate the crime scene to impede the successful prosecution of one of their own. This resource imbalance can be at least partially counteracted by a judicial system that takes rights seriously and engages in a vigorous prosecution in cases of police violence, as in Uruguay, by the participation of a private prosecutor, as in some of the jurisdictions studied here, or when pressure is brought to bear on judicial actors, as when a particular case prompts a popular outcry and a demand for justice. Social and political pressure is, however, as Brinks notes, a double-edged sword that can and frequently does lead the courts to emit judgments in favour of the police and in consonance with demands for ‘law and order’ but at variance with the rule of law. The most striking evidence of this tendency is the informal rule Brinks identifies as operating in cases where the victims are seen as violent criminals: in such cases, he suggests, blatantly illegal police killings will fail to result in a conviction in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, indicating that judges apply their own normative standards to such cases. Drawing on a wealth of evidence from two cities each in Argentina (Córdoba and Buenos Aires) and Brazil (Salvador and São Paulo) as well as from Uruguay, Brinks shows how these and other factors materially affect the outcomes of prosecutions for police killings. While his evidence demonstrates that the poor and marginal – the usual victims of police homicides – are faced with tremendous obstacles in this quest for justice, he also offers a highly-nuanced picture that sheds light on factors that can nevertheless operate in favour of a fair trial and can go some way towards redressing the balance.

From this immensely rich and detailed study, Brinks draws some general conclusions. He proposes some institutional changes, arguing cogently in favour of effective witness protection programmes, speedier trials and the jailing of police suspects to minimise the terrorisation of witnesses; perhaps surprisingly, he does not suggest the generalised use of private prosecutions, although his study finds that the existence of this institution has a major impact on the conviction rate. An important insight from his research is that institutional reforms will have little effect if they fail to take the social, political and economic context into account, leading to his call for a ‘contextual institutionalism’ that can guide research and policymaking on the effect of institutions across political and social contexts.

This is an innovative study that draws on both socio-legal studies and comparative politics and combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. It represents a highly significant contribution to the growing body of literature on democracy and the rule of law in Latin America.