'Law and Development' academic course syllabus

Recently, I was updating my own 'law and development' syllabus and called some colleagues and friends to try to find out what the state of that teaching is. I'm impressed at the diversity of courses that are focussed on 'law and development', and the different areas of emphasis. It goes to show that this is indeed a very broad field with many levels of entry.  So far, these are the professors, schools and courses I am able to compile- you can google most of these to find the syllabus online. I hope to make this a live working file in the near future so that collaborators can update it anytime.

Professor Name	School	Department	Course Name	Year/Semester
Professor David Kennedy	The School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London	Law	Law and Development	2009-2010 (Fall 2009)
Prof. Karol Boudreaux	GMU Law School	Law	Law and International Development
Melissa Thomas	Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University	Law	Law and Development	Spring, 2010
Associate Professor Maxine Burkett	U Colorado Boulder Law School	Law	International Development Law & Policy	Spring 2008
James Cooper, Visiting Professor Institute Professor, California Western School of Law	Earl Warren College, UCSD	Law	Law and Development in the Americas
Kevin Davis	NYU School of Law	Law	Law and Development	Fall, 2006
Prof. Frank K. Upham	NYU School of Law	Law	Law and Development	Fall 2008
David Trubek & John Ohnesorge	Wisconsin	Law	Law and Modernization in the Developing World
Alvaro Santos	University of Texas Law School	Law	Economic Development and Law	Fall 2005
Professor Tom Ginsburg Professor Thomas Ulen	University of Illinois, College of Law	Law	Law and Economic Development	Fall Semester, 2005
Professor Mark Sidel	University of Iowa	Law	Law and Development	Spring 2004
Professor John Norton Moore	University of Virginia	Law	International Development Law The Rule of Law: Controlling Government (Seminar in Contemporary Legal Thought)	Fall 2009
Ruth L. Okediji	Duke	Law	International Development Law	Fall 2008, Fall 2007

The Last Mile and Vermont- by Matt Dunne, candidate for Vermont Governor

Matt Dunne, current candidate for Vermont Governor, delivered a presentation today on 'Transforming the Last Mile State' at Berkman's Lawlab Series. What I was interested in is finding parallels, if any, between the 'last mile' in a US state and the 'last mile' in developing countries. I have below firstly, my reactions to his presentation, and then a summary of his presentation itself, with the official event announcement:

Reactions:

• While his interest in 'broadband' is passionate, his political message was more key. It does remind me of many government 'IT' champions in developing countries.
• I worry about too much technology determinism on his part= "Tech Will bring Good (and only good)", again very common among IT proponents in developing countries (and elsewhere)
• The technology is not the hard part, particularly for Vermont as a 'last state' (as he claimed) that can study lessons already learned in other States and countries
• I wonder about the causation between his claim of broadband with competitiveness (ie does broadband directly cause competitiveness and therefore 'development?')
• His claim that Vermont can go 'From Worst to First' because of Broadband, I question if it is too simplistic and reliant on leapfrogging technology (there was not much mention about the non-technology issues that often, if not always, overwhelm the technology).

Summary:

Here is my summary (liveblogged) about his presentation:

World Bank New Publication: Justice and Development Working Paper Series

As an offshoot of the World Bank's Justice of the Poor program (and supported by the Justice Reform Practice Group), the Bank has previously announced and recently published its inaugural volume of its new Justice and Development Working Paper Series. Official literature is adapted for your information as follows:

About 

The Justice and Development Working Paper Series serves as a platform for new and innovative thinking on justice and development, featuring work from World Bank staff and external authors. It is a knowledge product of the World Bank’s Justice Reform Practice Group, which generates knowledge and provides advice and assistance to Bank staff and Bank client countries on building and improving state and non-state justice system institutions and mechanisms. Justice and Development disseminates the findings of works in progress to facilitate a more rapid exchange of ideas about development issues and justice reform.

Call for Papers
Justice and Development seeks original research papers on law, justice and development. We welcome publications from both Bank colleagues and external contributors. Manuscripts must be in English, and no longer than 25-30 pages. They can be submitted to the Editorial Office at any time of the year. All submitted papers will be carefully reviewed by the Editorial Board. Criteria for selection include rigorous scholarship and innovative approaches related to law/justice and development. If you are interested in submitting a paper, please call +1 202 458 2950 or email: mayano@worldbank.org.

Online Access
http://go.worldbank.org/OP73V82SJ0

Inaugural Volume
2009 Volume 1- The inaugural volume of the Justice and Development Working Paper Series consists of three papers on local-level dynamics of justice and governance in Sierra Leone. These essays — one about the interaction between local councils and traditional authorities, another one about the power relations between youth and their elders, and a third one about false development promises - are the products of qualitative research conducted in 2006 and 2007 by the World Bank Sierra Leone Justice for the Poor team. The papers aim to enrich our empirical understanding of the workings of justice and governance in the country. The goal of Justice for the Poor, in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, is to employ such knowledge to improve development practice. Papers include:

• Background methodology paper: Justice for the Poor and Understanding Processes of Change in Local Governance by Ryann Elizabeth Manning 
• Issue 1: The Landscape of Local Authority in Sierra Leone: How "Traditional" and "Modern" Justice Systems Interact by Ryann Elizabeth Manning 
• Issue 2: Challenging Generations: Youths and Elders in Rural and Peri-Urban Sierra Leone by Ryann Elizabeth Manning 
• Issue 3: Exploitation of Poor Communities in Sierra Leone: False Promises in Reconstruction and Development by Ryann Elizabeth Manning 

You can access these papers (and others in future series) here on the World Bank website. 

The Future of Law and Development- Symposium by LawDevelopment Blog

Given my recent update on the current thinking on Law and Development, I was interested to hear that Tom Ginsburg and his team at Law And Development Blog were holding their first ever online Symposium on the Future of Law and Development.

The parameter of the symposium was framed by three questions:
1. Is Law and Development really a field, both in practice and especially in academia?
2. What are the lessons learned about the topic?
3. What should be our academic and applied future focus?

The responses of these prominent scholars (some of whom are also practitioners) confirms my own thoughts on this subject in practice and study- that it is still an evolving, broadening field that is compounded by the fact that there is so little agreement on what is meant by 'development', 'law' and 'impact'.

Here is my summary of the wide array of responses to the three questions.

Chinese Internet vs. Other Internet?

I saw Donnie Hao Dong's presentation about a 'Splitting Internet' today at Berkman- about the internet not being homogeneous- and I must say it is interesting to hear the perspective from the inside- Dong is a native Chinese law professor from Kunming. His talk was on Chinese censorship and how the internet might not be universal across cultures. You can view the webcast here. This is especially useful to me, in light of my upcoming lecture at UC Berkeley on "Chinese Law, ICTs and Entrepreneurship." 

I was going to do a summary of Donnie's presentation on this post, but David Weinberger had liveblogged the event here, and also had an illuminating chat with Donnie after the talk. So I shamelessly reproduce and adapt some key points that struck me about the presentation: 



(UPDATE: 4/7/10: Donnie clarifies that he is not advocating for an isolated 'Chinese internet' but that rather, "What I want to argue is simple: the social structure and social norms, as well as the legal concepts may affect online ecology profoundly, hence the "single" Internet is not a truth..." Read more at his Blawgdog post.  

4th #ICT4D Twitter Chat- Social Networking for Developing World?

Having missed last month's #ICT4D chat on working with local governments because I was in Serbia, I was happy to participate in February's chat on Social Networking. Again I shamelessly reproduce here the awesome summary posted by Micheal Downey over at ICTWorks:

Without a doubt, social networking has changed the technology landscape in places like Europe and the United States. But what is the role of this technology in the Global South? The February #ICT4D Twitter Chat focused on this during a lively 90-minute dialogue between technologists, implementers, and others in the ICT4D world. (Take the Chat Survey)

Afghanistan- Institutional vs Informal Justice?

Having been in many developing countries, including Afghanistan where I was involved in parts of the strategy mentioned below, I have found myself wondering the same questions posed by this article all the time. However, I do admit that, being a poster child of development of Singapore, I often hold a chip on my shoulder about 'imperialism', 'western ideas' and 'technical assistance'. Still, I often wonder if I have traded sides when I started working for the 'international development' industry.

By Jasteena Dhillon

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Published on Thursday, Mar. 04, 2010 4:55PM EST

"It is widely believed that 80 per cent of Afghans use what is called the “informal justice” system to resolve their legal disputes. If this is accurate, we must ask why the international community continues to spend billions of dollars on implementing a Western-style justice strategy that focuses primarily on formal institutional development – like the rebuilding of courthouses and training of the actors in the formal judicial system – when most Afghans are perfectly content with what they already have.

The international community has too often approached the development of institutions in postconflict states from the perspective that they know best how to solve the problems there. But this viewpoint is naive and shortsighted." Read the rest of the article

A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth, and Poverty Reduction

(updated 3/4/10) In addition to my own quick responses below, see also the pletora of responses, including one by my friend Michael Best to this essay that have arisen since its publication last year.

(first posted 9/30/09)

As a background paper to the 2nd IDRC-Harvard Forum (which I announced recently), Randy Spence and Matthew Smith posted their above-titled essay on the Publius Project on September 21 2009, with the purpose of surveying the wide variety of research and action regarding ICTs and development that has surged since the 1st pre-WSIS Forum in 2003.

Acknowledging subjectivity, they claim that current literature comes in the following five following 'stories': universal access, economic and social services, openness, human development and innovation. Below I provide a summary of that essay and also my own responses.