Legal Pluralism and Development: Scholars and Practitioners in Dialogue

Description

Previous efforts at legal development have focused almost exclusively on state legal systems, many of which have shown little improvement over time. Recently, organizations engaged in legal development activities have begun to pay greater attention to the implications of local, informal, indigenous, religious and village courts or tribunals, which often are more efficacious than state legal institutions, especially in rural communities. Legal pluralism is the term applied to these situations because these institutions exist alongside official state legal systems, usually in a complex or uncertain relationship. Although academics, especially legal anthropologists and sociologists, have discussed legal pluralism for decades, their work has not been consulted in the development context. This book brings together, in a single volume, contributions from academics and practitioners to explore the implications of legal pluralism for legal development.

Brian Z. Tamanaha is the William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law at the Washington University School of Law. He is the author of six books, most recently Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide (2009) and Law as a Means to an End (2006). He is the recipient of the inaugural Dennis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory (2006) and the Herbert Jacob Book Prize (2002). Tamanaha has delivered a number of high profile lectures in the United States and abroad. Caroline Sage is a Senior Social Development Specialist at the World Bank. She previously headed the World Bank Justice for the Poor program, which focuses on legal empowerment and mainstreaming justice and conflict management concerns into broader governance and development efforts. She has written numerous articles and edited books on law and development and continues to lead an in-depth research effort focusing on these issues as part of the Justice for the Poor program. Michael Woolcock is Senior Social Scientist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank and is the one of the founders of the World Bank's Justice for the Poor program. He has published extensively on the social dimensions of economic development. From 2000 to 2006 Woolcock taught part-time at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and from 2007 to 2009 he was the founding Research Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester.

'This is an excellent edited collection of papers that moves forward a number of longstanding debates within legal pluralism as today's scholars and practitioners increasingly focus on its practical implications for legal reform. Although the contributions are written as stand-alone chapters, the richness of the debate that runs through all the papers means that the reader will benefit much from reading the book from cover to cover.' Helen Dancer, Journal of Legal Pluralism