Dr Raul Sanchez Urribarri (PhD in Political Science, South Carolina; LLM, Cambridge; BCL, UCAB) is a Lecturer in Crime, Justice and Legal Studies at the Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University (Melbourne). His scholarly work focuses on democracy, rule of law and comparative judicial politics. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the lack of judicial independence in Venezuela, and preparing a coauthored journal special issue on the informal dimension of judicial politics in non-Western democracies. He teaches Law and Development, Research Methods and Policing in Democratic Societies, and co-coordinates a study-abroad subject to New Orleans (Tulane University) and Mississippi.