Abstract

The article examines which features comparative legal scholars consider relevant when examining Latin America legal traditions. First, it assesses the expression "Latin America" from a legal linguistic perspective; it then detects the analogies, the commonalities, and the differences that fall under this linguistic label (e.g., the different forms culture, codification, colonization, and - to a lesser extent - the language have taken in Latin America). Furthermore, the article focuses on those patterns that are specific to public and constitutional comparative legal studies (such as the frame of government, the sources of law, decentralizing processes, constitutional litigation). The analysis is aimed at ascertaining whether these patterns devise either a model per se or in some of its institutional features (such as the treatment of indigenous minorities). To this extent, it upholds that mainstream constitutional narratives (may these be based on either Eurocentric premises or the new universal religion of globalization) are not useful when handling with diversity and legal pluralism which is Latin America.