New paper offers critique of Legal Empowerment approach

Legal Empowerment: An Impossible Dream? by Hooria Hayat & Khola Ahme

Summary: This paper takes a critical look at the concept of Legal Empowerment, tracing its genesis and differences with the earlier concepts of Rule of Law and Rule of Law Orthodoxy. It then examines the problems emanating from applying Legal Empowerment as a strategy to postcolonial states such as Pakistan and identifies two particular problems: the existence of parallel systems and the imposition of an alien system of law, i.e. the British law, in India. The introduction of English law, its practice and the values that they espoused, although essential to the system they were trying to set in place, were alien and therefore disruptive and robbed the courts that used them of their authority. It argues that the disruption of an evolutionary process in legal developments in India impeded an integrated legal system with legitimacy amongst the people the law is applied to.

Law and Development Review Special Inaugural Issue (2008)

The Special Inaugural Issue (2008) of the Law and Development Review, edited by Yong-Shik Lee (Y.S. Lee), Bhupinder Chimni, and David Trubek, was published in last month by Bepress, the Berkeley Electronic Press. The Law and Development Review is the first journal to address the role and impact of law, both domestic and international, on economic and social development. This journal encourages a global exchange of ideas on this important subject, and lays the foundation of critical law and development studies.

You'll need a subscription to read the articles online, or you can read it for free either at a library that has a subscription, (UPDATED 6/6/2009) or via free guest pass if you are a nonprofit or an academic after filling out a form.

Articles:

• Foreword, The Editors
• The Sen Conception of Development and Contemporary International Law Discourse: Some Parallels, (Bhupinder Chimni)
• Proliferation of Free Trade Agreements and Some Systemic Issues - In Relation to the WTO Disciplines and Development Perspectives (Mitsuo Matsushita and Y.S. Lee)
• Rediscovering the Role of Developing Countries in GATT before the Doha Round (Faizel Ismail)
• The Generalized System of Preferences of the United States: Does It Promote Industrialization and Economic Growth in Least Developed Countries? (Caf Dowlah)
• EU Sanitary Standards and Sub-Saharan African Agricultural Exports: A Case Study of the Livestock Sector in East Africa (Melaku Geboye Desta)
• Who Are the Developing Countries in the WTO? (Fan Cui)

Editors:

• Editor-in-Chief: Yong-Shik Lee (Y.S. Lee), The Law and Development Institute
• Senior Editor: Bhupinder Chimni, Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Mitsuo Matsushita, University of Tokyo Faculty of Law
• Senior Advisor: David Trubek, Wisconsin Law School
• Michael Trebilcock, University of Toronto Law School