Symposium: The Future of Law and Development, Part III

Kevin Davis, Adam Feibelman, Brian Z. Tamanaha, & Yuka Kaneko

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Law and Development as Social Science

Kevin Davis[*]

I would like to take up Anna Gelpern’s invitation to define the study of Law and Development broadly and to reject the presumption that the inquiry will focus narrowly on the law-related projects of bilateral aid agencies and international organizations.[1]

I am interested in the relationship between law on the one hand and, on the other hand, development (however defined), and it is not clear to me that externally directed “Law and Development” projects are always central to understanding that relationship.  (Isn’t that a reasonable inference to draw from all of the studies that question the impact of those projects?)  Don’t get me wrong, I think it is often crucially important to take foreign actors into account when trying to understand where the “law” part of the equation comes from, as well as what factors besides law might be influencing development.  But I am skeptical of the notion that foreign actors are always central to the story, especially in some of the larger developing countries; do we really understand the legal systems of Brazil, India, and China best by focusing on the components influenced by the World Bank and the IMF?

As far as the future of Law and Development is concerned, I believe that it will and should involve becoming even more of a social science.  I also believe, however, that the contributions to this Symposium have identified many of the pitfalls that lie in that direction.  To begin with, there are obviously methodological questions about what empirical methods are best suited to uncovering the kinds of causal relationships between law and social outcomes we are looking for and theoretical questions about what legal and social variables ought to be measured.  But I think that there are even more profound questions to be asked about the entire enterprise, especially if the purpose is to give policymakers insights into “what works.”

Symposium: The Future of Law and Development, Part II

Mariana Prado, Susan D. Franck, & John Cioffi

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Should We Adopt a “What Works” Approach in Law and Development?

Mariana Prado[*]

My comments will be mostly connected to Tom’s third question, relating to the future,[1] and I would like to start by responding to Salil Mehra.[2]  I generally agree that there is an excessive focus on replicable “tools” and “best practices” in Law and Development studies, but I think there are a lot of questions to be asked regarding Mehra’s suggestion that the way forward involves addressing embedded cultural practices and institutions.  In fact, there are currently a number of scholars (myself included) emphasizing the importance of looking at the interaction between so-called informal institutions (such as cultural practices, social norms, and historically entrenched attitudes and values).  The problem is that although most of these analyses are very helpful in understanding what went wrong and why the “toolkit” did not work in a given context, they do not tell us how to improve our efforts going forward.  So, like the “blueprint” Law and Development scholars, the “context matters” Law and Development scholars are not helping the field move forward.

Symposium: The Future of Law and Development, Part I

Tom Ginsburg, Salil Mehra, Katharina Pistor, & Anna Gelpern

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The Future of Law and Development

Tom Ginsburg[*]

Welcome to the Law and Development blog symposium!  We are thrilled to have a fantastic array of participants lined up and trust that the discussion will be lively.  In our call for participation, we asked people to reflect on the diverse conceptions of “law and development” and to take the opportunity to think about the directions the field is headed.  I would like to begin by posing three questions for consideration, though I anticipate that we may end up heading in quite different directions as well.

First, as an initial question, is Law and Development really a field?  In a recent paper, Brian Tamanaha argues that Law and Development is “a poorly constructed category that lacks internal coherence . . . .  Law and development work is better seen, instead, as an agglomeration of projects perpetuated by motivated actors supported by funding.”[1]  Much depends, of course, on what we mean by a field.  As a field of applied activity, Law and Development seems to have a clear boundary involving reform projects related to legal institutions.  As a scholarly field, however, it may be less clear.  On the one hand, we have two nascent journals, the Law and Development Review and the Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, which is surely one sign of the institutionalization of a scholarly field.  On the other hand, one might argue that there is sufficient lack of consensus on method and topic to deserve the title “field.”  But if not a field, what is it?