This volume of essays contributes to the understanding of global law reform by questioning the assumption in law and development theory that laws fail to transfer because of shortcomings in project design and implementation. It brings together leading scholars who demonstrate that a synthesis of law and development, comparative law and regulatory perspectives (disciplines which to date have remained intellectually isolated from each other) can produce a more nuanced understanding about development failures. Arguing for a refocusing of the analysis onto the social demand for legal transfers, and drawing on empirically rich case studies, contributors explore what recipients in developing countries think about global legal reforms. This analytical focus generates insights into how key actors in developing countries understand global law reforms and how to better predict how legal reforms are likely to play out in recipient countries.

Leading scholars provide a fresh theoretical look at the reasons why many legal development projects fail and explore in rich empirical detail how different societies interpret global legal reforms and the implications of this for development aid.

This comparative study of rules governing development assistance asks how accountability, human rights and sovereignty are preserved while combating poverty.

Legal Reform in the Contemporary Socialist World explores four decades of legal reform in the socialist countries of China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and Cuba from a comparative perspective. Spanning the late 1970s to the present, it examines various projects, methods, strategies, contents, driving forces, and limitations of legislative reform, administrative reform, judicial reform, and reform of the legal profession. Legal reform in these countries is the project of the political elite to improve the legal system while retaining its core socialist principles. It is carried out through legislative enactments, amendments, and replacements, which the political elite adopt using incremental strategies to reform the legal system sporadically or systematically. Socialist legal reform is animated by the political aspiration to create the rule of law, the impact of social-economic change, and the influence of transnational and comparative law. Despite significant reforms, the socialist principles of the legal systems in these countries largely remain intact. This legal reform, however, varies considerably by country. Legal Reform in the Contemporary Socialist World offers a holistic view of understudied jurisdictions in comparative law, essential for anyone studying or working in these areas in law, politics, or policy.

Over the past two decades Global Legal Pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the 21st century. Wherever one looks, there is conflict among multiple legal regimes. Some of these regimes are state-based, some are built and maintained by non-state actors, some fall within the purview of local authorities and jurisdictional entities, and some involve international courts, tribunals, and arbitral bodies, and regulatory organizations. Global Legal Pluralism has provided, first and foremost, a set of useful analytical tools for describing this conflict among legal and quasi-legal systems. At the same time, some pluralists have also ventured in a more normative direction, suggesting that legal systems might sometimes purposely create legal procedures, institutions, and practices that encourage interaction among multiple communities. These scholars argue that pluralist approaches can help foster more shared participation in the practices of law, more dialogue across difference, and more respect for diversity without requiring assimilation and uniformity. Despite the veritable explosion of scholarly work on legal pluralism, conflicts of law, soft law, global constitutionalism, the relationships among relative authorities, transnational migration, and the fragmentation and reinforcement of territorial boundaries, no single work has sought to bring together these various scholarly strands, place them into dialogue with each other, or connect them with the foundational legal pluralism research produced by historians, anthropologists, and political theorists. Paul Schiff Berman, one of the world's leading theorists of Global Legal Pluralism, has gathered over 40 diverse authors from multiple countries and multiple scholarly disciplines to touch on nearly every area of legal pluralism research, offering defenses, critiques, and applications of legal pluralism to 21st-century legal analysis. Berman also provides introductions to every part of the book, helping to frame the various approaches and perspectives. The result is the first comprehensive review of Global Legal Pluralism scholarship ever produced. This book will be a must-have for scholars and students seeking to understand the insights of legal pluralism to contemporary debates about law. At the same time, this volume will help energize and engage the field of Global Legal Pluralism and push this scholarly trajectory forward into another two decades of innovation.

This volume of essays contributes to the understanding of global law reform by questioning the assumption in law and development theory that laws fail to transfer because of shortcomings in project design and implementation. It brings together leading scholars who demonstrate that a synthesis of law and development, comparative law and regulatory perspectives (disciplines which to date have remained intellectually isolated from each other) can produce a more nuanced understanding about development failures. Arguing for a refocusing of the analysis onto the social demand for legal transfers, and drawing on empirically rich case studies, contributors explore what recipients in developing countries think about global legal reforms. This analytical focus generates insights into how key actors in developing countries understand global law reforms and how to better predict how legal reforms are likely to play out in recipient countries.