Law and Development

Goals of theCourse

As a basic subject, by taking this course, participants are expected to understand the outline of law and institution in the context of development, as well as how to implement legal regulations for the development.
Through this course, students should understand: what is the relationship between the legal system and socio-economic-politicaldevelopment; what legal system is desirable for socio-economic development; what is the mechanism of legal development; what is adifference of legal system and practice between developing society and developed society.
In the first part of the lecture, the lecture will discuss theoretical aspects of the law and development, including economic theory, legaltheory, and cultural theory. The focus of this course is not limited to the law in narrow definitions such as legislation, regulation, orjudgment. The discussion also covers various forms of government mechanisms, public administration, and political regimes. Furthermore,informal law (such as religious or customary norms and institutions) has a significant impact on development. Thus, the course alsodiscusses the relationship between development and informal institutions.

In the second part, this lecture will try conducting practical lessons, namely, learning legislation. In implementing a development project,legislation plays a significant role by changing peoples behavior (imposing sanctions), legitimating resource allocation (e.g., allowing agovernment to allocate budget to a particular area), giving guidelines (showing what is an expected goal), or maintaining social order (solvingdisputes in a peaceful way).
In this lecture, we will make a draft bill to achieve a development goal (the issue will be discussed in the class). Legal drafting includes goalsetting, making legal research on facts, determining ways of the regulation (punishment or incentive), constructing a consistent structureof rules, and so on. Students are expected to participate actively in the class and preparation work.

Japanese version is below:
法と開発

Objectives ofthe Course

Participants can:
obtain essential knowledge about the development that is necessary to understand the relationship between law and development;
acquire the essential skill to apply the institutional theory in studying own research topic;
obtain knowledge on the importance of legislation and legal policy in the development and basic skills in legislative drafting.

Structure of the Course

Part I:

1. Introduction
2. What does "development" mean and how to measure development? : definition and determinants of development
3. What is law?: Sharing working definition of law by comparing formal and informal norms.
4. Theories of law and development (1): Economic theory of law and development
5. Theories of law and development (2): Other theories of law and development
6. Legal technical assistance: Foreign aid for institutional reform
7. Challenges for the rule of law reform: Corruption as a case study

Part II:

8. Discussion about development goals in each society.
9. Role of legislators in development
10. Researching legislative facts
11. Determining the contents of a legislation
12. Legislative writing: words, sentences, and references
13. Discussion and presentation (1)
14. Discussion and presentation (2)
15. Wrapping-up

CourseEvaluationMethod and Criteria

Mid-term assingment 40%, End-term assingment (or presentation) 40%, Contribution to class 20%.
Credit is given to C- or C (where applicable) or higher grade for each criterion.

Textbook/ReferenceBook

Textbook:

• Ann Seidman, Rober Seidman, and Nalin Abeyesekere, Legislative Drafting for Democratic Social Change: A Manual for Drafters, KluwerLaw, 2001.
• Michael J. Trebilcock and Mariana Mota Prado edd., Advanced introduction to law and development, Edward Elgar, 2014.

Both books are available at the GSID library

Reference:
The teacher will instruct reading materials for each class.

Lecture materials

PartⅠ:
No.1
No.2
No.3
No.4
No.5

This lecture is provided under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

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