Bolivia

Legal tradition

Bolivia belongs to the civil law with indigenous jurisdiction tradition. A civil-law system reconstituted by the 2009 Constitution as a plurinational state. Its defining feature is legal pluralism: indigenous, peasant and campesino jurisdiction holds equal hierarchy with ordinary jurisdiction (Article 179), a stronger formulation than the coordination models used in Colombia, Ecuador or Peru. Sucre is the constitutional capital and seat of the courts, while La Paz holds the executive and legislature.

How power is divided

Unitary with autonomies. Nine departments, municipalities, regions and indigenous territories each have elected assemblies and defined legislative competence under the Framework Law of Autonomies, which makes Bolivia substantially more decentralised than its unitary label suggests.

Where law comes from

Constitution and the bloque de constitucionalidad

Ratified human-rights treaties are read into the constitutional block.

Statutes of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly

Plus autonomous departmental and indigenous legislation within competence.

Codes

Civil Code (1976), Penal Code, Código Procesal Civil (2014), General Labour Act.

Indigenous norms and procedures

Applied by indigenous jurisdiction with equal hierarchy, bounded by the Jurisdictional Demarcation Act.

The legal profession

A law degree plus a national registration with the Ministry of Justice and membership of a departmental colegio de abogados. Practitioners in indigenous jurisdiction are not lawyers: those proceedings are conducted by the community's own authorities under its own norms, and a state lawyer has no right of audience there.