The law and development movement was a small but significant part of the broader United States foreign aid program of the 1960s and 1970s. In this critical and perceptive study the author shows that “the heart of the … movement was reflected in its confidence in, indeed celebration of, … American legal models, and in the basic optimistic notion that what worked well for the United States would work well for the developing world” (p. 247).
More specifically, the law and development movement was a combined effort of private foundations, the academic and legal communities, and the United States government to influence the development and uses of law in the Third World. It involved attempts to influence or change teaching methods in the law schools as well as the very concepts of law (the idea of law as social engineering, for example). It was to be a part of a combined effort to push for economic development and political change, and to fight communism. Detailed studies are presented for Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, along with numerous references to other Third World countries.
While the participants, “a formidable and elite array of American legal talent” (p. 282), disclaimed any intent to “Americanize” law and related institutions in the host countries, the author shows that “American legal missionaries were engaged in a process that was ethnocentric in origin, character, and implementation … in significant measure oriented toward the implicit transfer of American legal models (p. 283).
Whatever the intent, if it was a form of imperialism as the book’s title implies, it was a form of imperialism that did not work. If anything was transferred, it was largely superficial and “it is reasonable to predict that whatever survives of these models will not be particularly American in character” (p. 245). Ironically, the very models and methods that we were “trying” to transfer were already under severe criticism within the United States for their lack of relevance to our own problems.
Perhaps this is not so much a study in imperialism as it is a study of what imperialists should not attempt. It is certainly a first-rate study in the problems (and, perhaps, the futility) of transferring concepts, institutions, and models.
