No field of academic study addresses a broader variety of human activity, and no field involves a broader range of human catastrophes and human triumphs, than the study of law. Yet no academic field suffers so much from parochialism. Even in the twenty-first century, the laws of one jurisdiction still differ from those of another; the techniques of one area of law differ from those of another; the study of substantive law can easily be divorced from the challenges of dispute resolution and enforcement; the study of any area of the law can be abstracted from the study of its economic and social and political context. And since the past seems to us to be another country, we are prone to the parochialism of people who forget their history. All the resulting barriers between disciplines are barriers to understanding. I congratulate the editors of this volume, and the authors, for the many ways in which they have promoted understanding of the challenges for law and public policy in Latin America, by knocking down barriers. They have done so by putting the study of law together with the study of policy, economics and politics. They have done so through comparative study of the laws of Latin American jurisdictions, and study of the relations between the Inter-American Human Rights System and the law and politics of particular countries. They have done so by connecting the study of law and policy with the study of history. They have done so by putting questions of the substance of the law in the context of the challenges of process and enforcement, and by focusing on the role of institutions.