The material is grouped into three sections. The first, on Legal Institutions and Development, includes papers surveying the historical and contemporary theoretical debates about the link between legal institutions and development as well as links to recent studies. In the 1960s, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and other private American donors underwrote an ambitious effort to reform the judicial systems and substantive laws of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. One reason the development community is fostering legal and judicial reform is the belief that, beyond their intrinsic worth, such reforms will help improve economic performance. This speech, delivered by Amartya Sen at the first World Bank conference on Comprehensive Legal and Judicial Development, discusses the importance of legal reform within a comprehensive development framework.
Legal reform advances freedom-a crucial and constitutive quality of comprehensive development.
Legal reform is, however, also causally interconnected with other constitutive elements of comprehensive development. By acting as a platform where the poor have equal voice and by creating the backbone of the capitalist system, a sound legal system is necessary to advance political and economic development. The Rule of Law is an ancient ideal. One of the earliest discussions that has survived is by Plato.