Political Justice under Authoritarian Regimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

The recent military regimes of Argentina (1976-83), Brazil (1964-85), and Chile (1973-89) each produced different modes of political justice. The Brazilian military regime used peacetime military courts to prosecute political dissidents and opponents, without ever declaring a state of siege or suspending the constitution. The Chilean regime suspended the constitution and prosecuted people in wartime military courts for the first five years of its rule. The Argentine regime not only suspended the constitution, it largely dispensed with courts and engaged in extrajudicial "disappearances" of presumed opponents. Why did these three regimes, often seen as sharing certain similar "bureaucratic-authoritarian" characteristics, produce such different types of authoritarian legality? This paper argues that the answer lies in the history of military-judiciary relations prior to the key political events that led to the imposition of the military regimes. It also asserts that variation in the mode of political justice under authoritarian rule helps account for differences in the approach to and results of judicial reform after the democratic transition in each case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]