In the Beginning was the Law… an Intellectual Odyssey

Is there such a distinctive phenomenon in practice as law and development? Isn’t all law directed towards some kind of development in the sense that new law – judicial decisions, legislation, administrative directives – change the existing law and so is a development from that existing law and in changing the existing law, change, in howsoever slight a degree, the economy and society of which the law is a part. Law and Development did not start in the 1960s when American legal scholars discovered the developing world nor did it end in the 1970s when, starved of funds to pursue their endeavours, many of those same scholars declared that law and development was dead . If we are to write about the future of law and development we must first be clear about its scope, its past and its present. We must first answer the questions: What is it? What are we? Where are we? How did we get here? Only then can we answer the question: Where should we go? Support for legal education is the one L&D input that brings together the external and the internal perspectives of L&D and the one such input that is highly unlikely to fail: in every society there are some lawyers who are concerned with justice, with freedoms and with advancing the rule of law. If it does nothing else as a community, the L&D community should make it its business to argue the case for support for legal education in the South and especially in ‘failed states’ so as to develop as rapidly as possible that critical mass of national legal skills and knowledge that is the only sure way to build up a national legal culture and so in turn create the undergirding for a legitimate, effective and just national legal system

In the Beginning was the Law… an Intellectual Odyssey

Is there such a distinctive phenomenon in practice as law and development? Isn’t all law directed towards some kind of development in the sense that new law – judicial decisions, legislation, administrative directives – change the existing law and so is a development from that existing law and in changing the existing law, change, in howsoever slight a degree, the economy and society of which the law is a part. Law and Development did not start in the 1960s when American legal scholars discovered the developing world nor did it end in the 1970s when, starved of funds to pursue their endeavours, many of those same scholars declared that law and development was dead . If we are to write about the future of law and development we must first be clear about its scope, its past and its present. We must first answer the questions: What is it? What are we? Where are we? How did we get here? Only then can we answer the question: Where should we go? Support for legal education is the one L&D input that brings together the external and the internal perspectives of L&D and the one such input that is highly unlikely to fail: in every society there are some lawyers who are concerned with justice, with freedoms and with advancing the rule of law. If it does nothing else as a community, the L&D community should make it its business to argue the case for support for legal education in the South and especially in ‘failed states’ so as to develop as rapidly as possible that critical mass of national legal skills and knowledge that is the only sure way to build up a national legal culture and so in turn create the undergirding for a legitimate, effective and just national legal system

Urban planning law in Liberia: the case for a transformational approach

This article discusses the need for a fundamental rethinking of urban planning in Liberia with special reference to Monrovia, the capital. Liberia is a post-conflict country and is facing a multitude of problems. One is the very rapid urbanisation of the country. Well over 50% of the population live in urban areas, and over one million people—one third of the population—live in Monrovia, for the most part in informal ‘illegal’ settlements with few facilities. Despite land issues being acknowledged as in need of being tackled as a matter of urgency, little has been done by the Johnson-Sirleaf government since it came to power in 2006. What is needed and what this article argues for is a plan for the development of Monrovia based on the Right to the City with residents given clear rights to land and to participate in the governance of their city. The approach is denominated as a transformational one, taking its inspiration from van der Walt’s approach set out in his Property in the Margins. The need for and the outline of an Urban Transformation Act are set out in the article which concludes with a warning that it cannot be supposed that the residents of Monrovia will continue indefinitely to put up with their very poor living conditions

Scaffolding Course Research Assignments to Incorporate Information Literacy Skill Development: An Interdisciplinary Pilot Project

Presentation from the Workshop for Information Literacy Use (WILU) 2016 Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Embedding librarians and systematic, multiple Information Literacy (IL) sessions into courses is gaining popularity. However, this is time-intensive for both faculty and librarians; faculty have to find time in their courses for multiple IL sessions, and librarians have to find time to teach all of these sessions across the curriculum. How can we embed librarian expertise and IL skill development into courses in a more sustainable way? This presentation will describe a cross-disciplinary partnership between the Behavioral Sciences librarian and four faculty in Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn on a pilot project which addresses this challenge. This pilot project began because faculty were finding that many of the students in their courses seemed to be getting overwhelmed by their research papers and projects, which was reflected in poor performance on these assignments. The pilot project team took an assignment scaffolding approach to address these issues. Assignment scaffolding involves taking complex assignments, such as research papers and projects, and breaking them down into smaller components. The pilot project team systematically restructured the research papers and projects in their courses to create scaffolded assignments reflecting the steps of the research process. IL skill development was integrated into these graded assignments, which built towards final research papers and projects. These scaffolded assignments were then piloted in six courses across Behavioral Sciences disciplines, with assessments to measure the overall effectiveness of this pilot project. This presentation walks through the process of restructuring and rewriting research papers and projects to incorporate IL skill development in a systematic, meaningful way. This presentation also discusses the benefits of adopting the assignment scaffolding method to integrate librarian expertise and systematic IL skill development into a course and across the curriculum, as well as the sustainability of this method.Presentation from the Workshop for Information Literacy Use (WILU) 2016 Conference in Vancouver, Canada.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150196/1/Anderson, Nadine - Scaffolding Course Research Assignments to Incorporate Information Literacy Skill Development - An Interdisciplinary Pilot Project .pdfDescription of Anderson, Nadine - Scaffolding Course Research Assignments to Incorporate Information Literacy Skill Development - An Interdisciplinary Pilot Project .pdf : Presentation Slide

Judicial Review, Irrationality, and the Legitimacy of Merits-Review

The definition of the irrationality ground of judicial review recognises the constitutional principle of the separation of powers, in allowing for judicial control of the executive only very rarely. The author in a previous article in this study found that the courts, on occasions, had intervened in circumstances where administrative decisions arguably were not irrational. To this end, the purpose of this article is to assess the constitutionality of these seemingly low standards of irrationality. The author does so by reference either to the manner of review employed—the use of the proportionality principle, for example—or the context of the administrative decision under scrutiny, such as the infringement of the applicant’s fundamental rights. The author finds that the cases from the previous article where low standards of irrationality were arguably adopted were, in fact, legitimate according to these chosen methods of evaluation. However, this is an interim conclusion because, for reasons of word length, the author is unable to complete a full assessment here. It is therefore proposed that a subsequent article will continue to examine the constitutionality of these cases. Furthermore, the author will also try and establish a zone of executive decision-making, for reasons of democracy, where the courts are excluded from irrationality review. If the author is unsuccessful in this regard, the final conclusion of this study will inevitably be that low standards of judicial intervention exist without limit—a clear assault on the constitutional principle stated above

Judicial Review, Irrationality, and the Limits of Intervention by the Courts

When exercising judicial review, the courts, on occasions, have intervened in circumstances where administrative decisions were not irrational. However, these low standards of judicial intervention are arguably constitutional, especially since the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). To this end, this article seeks to establish a zone of executive decision-making, for reasons of democracy, where the courts are clearly excluded. But it is unable to do so. Does this mean, therefore, that judicial intervention on the grounds of irrationality exists without limit? Assuming this to be the case, it is suggested that the courts should show greater respect to the administrative branch of the state where it has genuinely sought to engage with the legal process in arriving at its decisions