Law in transition
Subtitle: human rights, development and transitional justice
By: edited by Ruth Buchanan and Peer Zumbansen
Series: Osgoode readers -- volume 3; Osgoode readers -- volume 3.
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Oxford, United Kingdom; Portland, Oregon
Language: eng
Number of pages: 355
ISBN-13: 9781849465922
Subjects: Transitional justice; Human rights; Law and economic development
Other titles: Human rights, development and transitional justice
Description: Law has become the vehicle by which countries in the 'developing world', including post-conflict states or states undergoing constitutional transformation, must steer the course of social and economic, legal and political change. Legal mechanisms, in particular, the instruments as well as concepts of human rights, play an increasingly central role in the discourses and practices of both development and transitional justice. These developments can be seen as part of a tendency towards convergence within the wider set of discourses and practices in global governance. While this process of convergence of formerly distinct normative and conceptual fields of theory and practice has been both celebrated and critiqued at the level of theory, the present collection provides, through a series of studies drawn from a variety of contexts in which human rights advocacy and transitional justice initiatives are colliding with development projects, programmes and objectives, a more nuanced and critical account of contemporary developments. The book includes essays by many of the leading experts writing at the intersection of development, rights and transitional justice studies. Notwithstanding the theoretical and practical challenges presented by the complex interaction of these fields, the premise of the book is that it is only through engagement and dialogue among hitherto distinct fields of scholarship and practice that a better understanding of the institutional and normative issues arising in contemporary law and development and transitional justice contexts will be possible. The book is designed for research and teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels. ENDORSEMENTS An extraordinary collection of essays that illuminate the nature of law in today's fragmented and uneven globalized world, by situating the stakes of law in the intersection between the fields of human rights, development and transitional justice. Unusual for its breadth and the quality of scholarly contributions from many who are top scholars in their fields, this volume is one of the first that attempts to weave the three specialized fields, and succeeds brilliantly. For anyone working in the fields of development studies, human rights or transitional justice, this volume is a wake-up call to abandon their preconceived ideas and frames and aim for a conceptual and programmatic restart. Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Ford International Associate Professor of Law and Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This superb collection of essays explores the challenges, possibilities, and limits faced by scholars and practitioners seeking to imagine forms of law that can respond to social transformation. Drawing together cutting-edge work across the three dynamic fields of law and development, transitional justice, and international human rights law, this volume powerfully demonstrates that in light of the changes demanded of legal research, education, and practice in a globalizing world, all law is "law in transition". Anne Orford, Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, University of Melbourne A terrific volume. Leading scholars of human rights, development policy, and transitional justice look back and into the future. What has worked? Where have these projects gone astray or conflicted with one another? Law will only contribute forcefully to justice, development and peaceful, sustainable change if the lessons learned here give rise to a new practical wisdom. We all hope law can do better - the essays collected here begin to show us how. David Kennedy, Manley O Hudson Professor of Law, Director, Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Global poverty and the politics of good intentions  -- Sundhya Pahuja; title: Human rights and development : a fragmented discourse  -- Issa G. Shivji; title: Rights and development : a social power perspective  -- Ananya Mukherjee-Reed; title: Is a new 'TREMF' human rights paradigm emerging? Evidence from Nigeria  -- Obiora Chinedu Okafor; title: The transformation of Africa : a critique of rights in transitional justice  -- Makau W. Mutua; title: Marks indicating conditions of origin in rights-based sustainable development  -- Nicole Aylwin and Rosemary J. Coombe; title: Rethinking the convergence of human rights and labour rights in international law : depoliticisation and excess  -- Vidya Kumar; title: Measuring the world : indicators, human rights and global governance  -- Sally Engle Merry; title: Governing by measuring : the millenium development goals in global governance  -- Kerry Rittich; title: Reparations and development  -- Naomi Roht-Arriaza; title: Making history or making peace : when prosecutions should give way to truth commissions and peace negotiations  -- Martha Minow; title: Transitional justice as global project : critical reflections  -- Rosemary Nagy; title: Holding up a mirror to the process of transition? The coercive sterilisation of Romani women in the Czech Republic post-1991  -- Morag Goodwin; title: Symptoms of sovereignty? Apologies, indigenous rights and reconciliation in Australia and Canada  -- Kirsten Anker; title: Working through 'bitter experiences' towards a purified European identity? A critique of the disregard for history in European constitutional theory and practice  -- Christian Joerges; title: The trials of history : losing justice in the monstrous and the banal  -- Vasuki Nesiah; title: Sociological jurisprudence 2.0 : updating law's inter-disciplinarity in a global context  -- Peer Zumbansen -- Epilogue:; title: Progressive law versus the critique of law & development : strategies of double agency revisited -- Bryant G. Garth.