Overall, the book does make a compelling case to focus on the independence of the judiciary and the nature of the judges when trying to understand progress in judicial investigations of human rights viola- tions. As democracies consolidate and evolve, the traditional focus on the executive—common in most “transitional” studies—must be expanded to include other institutions that play an active political role. By focusing on the judiciary itself, Skaar sheds light on the advances and retreats in the efforts to bring about justice to human rights violations committed under authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Patricio Navia New York University Brian Loveman, No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the West- ern Hemisphere Since 1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Car- olina Press, 2010. Illustrations, maps, tables, appendixes, notes, bib- liography, index, 552 pp.; hardcover $35. The theatrics of George W. Bush’s eight-year presidency prompted much soul searching concerning the supposed U.S. abdication of its throne as self-declared global defender of freedom and democracy. Onto the scene burst Barack Obama, whose redemptive promises of “change” and “hope” suggested a transition to saner and safer times, in which lofty ideals would inform the responsible exercise of U.S. power around the world. Yet the two administrations have demonstrated more similarities than differences in approaches to international affairs, with the latter largely following the previously criticized policies of the former in areas ranging from the maintenance of strategic alliances with unsavory regimes to the logic of the “War on Terror.” Little substantive change has accompanied the rhetorical shift. In this book, Brian Loveman copiously and skillfully documents the president-by-president continuities in U.S. foreign policy from the beginning of the republic. Dismissing the often-held “isolationist myth” that the United States was inward-looking until its 1898 intervention in the Spanish-American War, Loveman argues that all presidents have shared a commitment to a foreign policy “grand strategy” consisting of the unilateral pursuit of self-interest and regional hegemony in the Americas, based on missionary zeal and closely held ideals of U.S. exceptionalism (4, 9). In sum, “no higher law” should govern U.S. geopolitical ambitions “than its own interpretation of the requirements of national security—not its own laws, not international human rights law, no law at all beyond America’s desire to command its own fortune” (383–84). To paraphrase Thucydides, the United States does what it can, while Latin America suffers what it must. 196 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 54: 4