Geography and the Architecture of Jurisdictional Cooperation in South America

The reduced enthusiasm for regional integration is not incompatible with the proliferation of cooperation initiatives. Quite the opposite: focusing on regional cooperation is a way to pursue (institutionalized) regional integration. Considering the immediate world, of intense human traffic and free movement of goods, requires new policies from the States to report the overcome of sovereign borders, as the legal relations are no longer bound to the borders of the old Nation-State. From a judicial point of view, an effective policy of judicial cooperation from the member states is needed to minimize the obstacles to the implementation of the cross-border justice and supply the new demand of judicial activity which involves transnational elements, intensified with the free movement of persons and goods. Concerning the international access to justice, this judicial cooperation refers to any process of realization of the rights in a space beyond the boundaries of the old nation-state, highlighting the communication of procedural acts, production of evidences and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the geography (where these cooperation initiatives are located) and the architeture of this cooperation (how are de differences of procedures) in South-America.