ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the extent to which the critiques of the Law and Development Movement (LDM) still apply to foreign legal assistance efforts in the post–Cold War era. It shows no attempt to create a grand theory of legal implantation or borrowing and, indeed, questions the validity of such unified theories. The chapter examines how international legal assistance shapes, reflects, and interacts with local legal reform efforts in one country—Vietnam. It focuses on public records and about 40 interviews conducted with representatives of donor agencies implementing legal assistance projects Vietnam, as well as with Vietnamese lawyers, academics, and government officials in charge of overseeing donor agencies and foreign legal assistance. Bilateral donors and their staffs and consultants face unique tensions in their legal assistance work in Vietnam. The chapter uses the phrase "LDM" to refer to the US-based movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent critique of methods of direct and indirect legal transfers.
