ABSTRACT
This paper explores the impacts of judicialization on environmental politics. Specifically, it analyzes whether and how the Supreme Court’s involvement affected the politics of pollution control in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin in Argentina (hereafter, the Riachuelo basin). A conventional legal perspective tends to assume that judicial resolutions can change a state’s practices and policies and ensure the realization of rights, including socio-environmental rights. However, a large body of literature stresses the court’s limitations when it comes to significant policy and social changes (see, for instance, the influential works of Horowitz, 1977, and Rosenberg, 1991). This paper explores this issue in the context of the Riachuelo basin.
