ABSTRACT
The term development has long been associated with specific paths along which ‘developing countries’ travel to achieve growth and progress from backwardness to modernity. Law and development has been an adjunct of development in seeing law as a key instrument for achieving development. While both terms have evolved with changed circumstances and ideologies and redefined as concerned with poverty relief, human and sustainable development, they have continued to retain their association with teleological progress, modernisation and, since the 1970s, with neoliberalism. Yet, they have faced significant critiques from dependency and postdevelopment perspectives, raising the question whether development and law and development are relevant bases for policy and academic analysis today and whether we need to locate the concerns for social justice in other ideas. This chapter aims to provide a framework for understanding these critiques and introduce the chapters by an international group of law and development scholars from a variety of perspectives in the quest to go beyond orthodox law and development thinking. Part I, Theoretical Perspectives on Development and Law, explores the notions of development and law and development. Part II, The Academy and Social Activism, addresses the role of the academy in law and development including its relation to activism and ignorance of global South perspectives. Part III, Global Governance and Justice, addresses issues in the development of global governance and considers case studies on the impact of new forms of governance on local communities.
