The State Law And Development

Previous efforts at legal development have focused almost exclusively on state legal systems, many of which have shown little improvement over time. Recently, organizations engaged in legal development activities have begun to pay greater attention to the implications of local, informal, indigenous, religious, and village courts or tribunals, which often are more efficacious than state legal institutions, especially in rural communities. Legal pluralism is the term applied to these situations because these institutions exist alongside official state legal systems, usually in a complex or uncertain relationship. Although academics, especially legal anthropologists and sociologists, have discussed legal pluralism for decades, their work has not been consulted in the development context. Similarly, academics have failed to benefit from the insights of development practitioners. This book brings together, in a single volume, contributions from academics and practitioners to explore the implications of legal pluralism for legal development. All of the practitioners have extensive experience in development projects, the academics come from a variety of backgrounds, and most have written extensively on legal pluralism and on development.

The book examines the theory and practice of law and development. It reviews the evolution of law and development studies and presents a general theory of law and development. The general theory sets the conceptual parameters of "law" and "development" and explains the mechanisms by which law impacts development. In the second part, the book applies the general theory to analyze the development cases of South Korea and South Africa from legal and institutional perspectives. The book also adopts, for the first time, the law and development approaches to analyze the economic issues of the United States. It discusses why it is critical to develop the Analytical Law and Development Model or "ADM."

This comprehensive volume brings together the major essays in the subject of law and development. The first sections concerns the relationship between legal systems and social, political and economic change in developing countries. The second section seeks to explain issues which concern law and development in the domestic context.

This book contributes new theoretical insight and in-depth empirical analysis about the relationship between transnational legality, state change and the globalisation of markets. The role of transnational economic law in influencing and reorganising national systems of governance evidences the constitutional dimensions of global capitalism: the power to institute new rules and limits for national states. This form of new constitutionalism does not undermine the state but transforms it by eroding national capacities and implanting global alternatives. While leading scholars in the field have emphasised the much-needed value of case studies, there are no studies available which consider the cumulative impact of multiple axes of transnational legal ordering on the national state or its constitution. This monograph addresses this empirical gap, whilst expanding the theoretical scope of the field. Mongolia’s recent transformation as a mineral-exporting country provides a rare opportunity to witness economic and legal globalisation in process. Based on careful empirical analysis of national law and policy-making, the book traces the way distinctive processes of transnational legal ordering have reorganised and reframed the governance of Mongolia’s mining sector, specifically by redistributing state power in relation to the market, sub-national administrations and civil society. The book investigates the role of international financial institutions, multinational corporations and non-governmental organisations in normative transmission, as well as the critical role of national actors in embedding transnational investment norms within the domestic legal and policy environment. As the book demonstrates, however, the constitutional ramifications of transnational legal ordering extend beyond the mining regime itself into more fundamental questions of the trajectory of state transformation, institutionally and ideologically. The book will be of interest to scholars of international law, global governance and the political economy of development.

This book draws on the analytical framework of New Institutional Economics (NIE) to critically examine the role which law and the legal system play in economic development. Analytical concepts from NIE are used to assess policies which have been supported by multilateral development organisations including securing private property rights, reform of the legal system and financial development. The importance of culture in shaping the legal environment, which in turn influences financial sector development, is also assessed using Oliver Williamson’s ‘levels of social analysis’ framework.

The book highlights new imaginaries required to transcend traditional approaches to law and development. The authors focus on injustices and harms to people and the environment, and confront global injustices involving impoverishment, patriarchy, forced migration, global pandemics and intellectual rights in traditional medicine resulting from maldevelopment, bad governance and aftermaths of colonialism. New imaginaries emphasise deconstruction of fashionable myths of law, development, human rights, governance and post-coloniality to focus on communal and feminist relationality, non-western legal systems, personal responsibility for justice and forms of resistance to injustices. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of development, law and development, feminism, international law, environmental law, governance, politics, international relations, social justice and activism.

This book examines the concept of ‘development’ from alternative perspectives and analyzes how different approaches influence law. ‘Sustainable development’ focuses on balancing economic progress, environmental protection, individual rights, and collective interests. It requires a holistic approach to human beings in their individual and social dimensions, which can be seen as a reference to ‘integral human development’ – a concept found in ethics. ‘Development’ can be considered as a value or a goal. But it also has a normative dimension influencing lawmaking and legal application; it is a rule of interpretation, which harmonizes the application of conflicting norms, and which is often based on the ethical and anthropological assumptions of the decision maker. This research examines how different approaches to ‘development’ and their impact on law can coexist in pluralistic and multicultural societies, and how to evaluate their legitimacy, analyzing the problem from an overarching theoretical perspective. It also discusses case studies stemming from different branches of law.