Legal Literacy and Poverty Reduction

I will start off with theoretical linkages between law and development. Despite all the slides you see on the board, very little in fact is known about the linkage between law, or the rule of law, and development. Wescott (2001) has referred to certain correlations between the rule of law and high income. The jury is still out regarding the robustness of this juxtaposition, especially with respect to the “causation” behind this correlation. What is important, however, is that when one considers the different theoretical perspectives from which people have approached the subject, there seems to be a convergence and an increasing recognition that law does play, or has the potential to play, some sort of a role. What exactly that role is differs across different perspectives.