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Macmillan, Fiona --- "Critical law and development" [2019] ELECD 1688; in Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco (eds), "Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 428

Book Title: Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory

Editor(s): Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 23

Section Title: Critical law and development

Author(s): Macmillan, Fiona

Number of pages: 18

Abstract/Description:

This chapter argues that the international development project is an artefact of the system of international economic law that was remade at the end of the Second World War. In this role, it is fundamentally implicated in the long relationship between international law, Western capitalism and imperialism. As a result, the famous 1922 ‘dual mandate’, according to which colonialism was justified as part of the universal historical mission of the imperial powers, continues to be central to the development project. The chapter suggests that the failure of the development project in the ‘developing’ world, with its consequent human suffering, may be alternatively characterised as a great success for that portion of the planet that counts itself, in international law terms, as developed.