The United States pushed civil-law Brazil to adopt American plea bargaining tactics

Evidence

Brazil has a “civil law” system derived from continental European traditions, which is very different from the “common law” system in place in the United States. Notably, judges in Brazil are not as bound by “precedent” as their North American counterparts. Lower courts have a wide range of leeway to rule as they please and are often overturned by higher courts on appeal. The tactic of threatening a suspect with jail time and then offering him a way out if he turns someone else in was not part of the legal architecture. It was largely the influence of the United States that led Brazil to adopt plea bargain techniques. As a result of pressure from Washington, direct contact between Brazilian and US jurists and officials, and the ambient assumption that things in the United States just worked better, authorities had pushed for the ability to investigate the same way as cops in the US for years. And after 2013, they could. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 442

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader literature on the global export of US legal and institutional models — same mechanism as the War on Terror policing template Bevins traces being copied by other states. — connects to: US influence transplanted plea bargaining into Brazil’s civil-law system
• ADDENDUM: Not an exact match to any of the three articles, but this US-driven legal transplantation theme would complement a future essay on soft-power legal exports.

Broader Connections

• US influence transplanted plea bargaining into Brazil’s civil-law system #corroborates (0.97)