Courses

    The purpose of this seminar is to explore the legal face of globalization, looking at the relationship between ideas about law and contemporary development models. What is globalization and how does it enhance or worsen people's well-being? And how is law implicated in the project of building transnational or national regimes that facilitate or restrict a world- integrated economy?

The seminar will consist of three parts. First, we will set up the intellectual and historical framework of the most influential development models since World War II (modest interventionism, export-led growth, neoliberalism and post- Washington Consensus), examining the economic theories, policies, and legal ideas underpinning these models. Second, we will discuss current development projects aimed at changing the legal regimes of developing countries, including judicial reform, land titling, market deregulation, and promotion of human rights. Finally, we will look at the transnational legal architecture of trade and labor, exploring its links to different experiences of national economic growth. Throughout this seminar, we will reflect on how legal analysis can enhance our understanding of existent choices in a process often presented as inevitable as well as illuminate the moral and political questions involved in development projects.