Daniel M. Brinks is Associate Professor in the Government Department and Law School at the University of Texas, Austin. He is also a Senior Researcher with the Christian Michelsen Institute. Abby Blass is a Ph.D. candidate in Government at the University of Texas, Austin.

• 1. Constitutional justice in the Americas at the turn of the Millennium; 2. Judicial power and the design of constitutional justice; 3. The political origins of powerful constitutional courts: constitutional governance and the politics of judicial design; 4. Identifying the political origins of constitutional justice through quantitative analysis; 5. Guatemala (1985): building constitutional justice in the shadow of Civil War; 6. Argentina (1994): negotiating a plural space of constitutional justice; 7. Bolivia (2009): governance logic in the new constitutionalism; 8. Conclusion: the politics of constitutional justice; Appendix A. Judicial power: concepts and measures.

'For some thirty years now, constitutional politics in general and, more specifically, the performance of higher courts, have become topics of primary public importance in Latin America. In spite of this, however, until now we did not have a critical and systematic study of these issues. Daniel M. Brinks and Abby Blass's book not only fills this void, but it does so on the basis of magnificent empirical work, and offering theoretical reflections on the subject that place this work in the vanguard of existing analyses of constitutional politics.' Roberto Gargarella, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires