Foreword Jim Yong Kim
In this time of extreme fragility in the world economy, when the needs of the world’s poor are as pressing as ever, all who work or study in the field of economic development must constantly reconsider what’s working, what’s not working, and what can work better. Economists, scientists, activists, politicians, investors, workers: all have a responsibility to carefully consider how best to contribute to the development agenda. Lawyers are no exception. Lawyers and legal specialists who work in the development sphere must engage in unending self-examination if they are to continue to make a useful, indeed essential, contribution to fighting poverty. The role of law, or rather the role of the “rule of law,” in achieving development outcomes has been acknowledged and studied extensively in recent decades. More analysis and debate are required, however, to understand the complicated and multifaceted nature of this role. That is a task that requires the input of practitioners, legal experts, and many others who encounter or work with legal systems. The World Bank Legal Review gathers this input from around the world and compiles it into a useful resource for all development practitioners and scholars. The subtitle of this volume, Legal Innovation and Empowerment for Development, highlights how the law can respond to the challenges posed to development objectives in a world slowly emerging from an economic crisis. The focus on innovation is a call for new, imaginative strategies and ways of thinking about what the law can do in the development realm. The focus on empowerment is a deliberate attempt to place the law into the hands of the poor; to give them another tool with which to resist poverty. The two themes are linked by their shared importance in the face of economic uncertainty. There is an urgent need for new, innovative thinking, and a great need to empower the poor to defend themselves. This volume shows some of the ways that the law can make an innovative and empowering difference in development scenarios. Development problems are complex and varied, and the theme of innovation and empowerment naturally has a broad scope. Consequently, this volume reaches far and wide. It considers the nature, promise, and limitations of legal innovation and legal empowerment. It looks at concrete examples in places such as Africa, the AsiaPacific region, and Latin America. It considers developments in issues with universal application, such as the rights of the disabled and the effectiveness of asset recovery measures. xi