INTRODUCTION

As Ginsburg and Moustafa point out in the Introduction to this volume, few academic studies have taken the law and legal institutions under authoritarian regimes seriously. Most studies of authoritarianism assume that regimes that come to power by force cannot rely on the law to maintain control of society or to legitimate themselves; their unconstitutional origins are seen as making such an effort contradictory and impossible. When analysts do consider the law, they often assume that authoritarian rulers wield it in a direct, unmediated way, relying on their agents to impose their will through consistently compliant courts. Yet even a cursory glance at actual authoritarian regimes, past and present, should lead us to question these assumptions. In fact, authoritarian regimes use the law and courts to bolster their rule all the time, in ways that a simplistic distinction between0 de facto and constitutional (or de jure) regimes obscures. Furthermore, this use of the law can be complicated and ambiguous, furnishing regime opponents and activist judges with venues in which to challenge the prerogatives of the regime and to liberalize authoritarian rule.

It might be thought that a security court would be the last place where such contestation might take place. However, such an assumption would also be incorrect. This chapter examines the use of security courts to prosecute political dissidents in three South American military dictatorships – those of Brazil (1964–1985), Chile (1973–1990), and Argentina (1976–1983).