Volume 4, Issue 2 - Special Issue (2011): The Law and Development Institute 2010 Inaugural Conference

Korea has achieved rapid economic development for the past few decades, raising its economic stature from one of the most impoverished countries in the world to an advanced industrial nation. Korea will host the G20 summit meeting in November 2010. What is the reason for the rapid economic development of Korea? This paper discusses the policy measures taken by the Korean government to promote exports, analyse their contribution and problems, and provide developing countries with the implications for their economic development process under the WTO system drawn from the experience of export-led economic development of Korea.

For many developed countries with confined land resources and high costs of labour, agricultural farming in foreign territories provides attractive business opportunities. Such investment projects will also be welcomed by many hosting developing countries given the substantial effect of economic development and employment. In this sense, agricultural development cooperation at an international level could contribute to the solution of the North-South problem. Notwithstanding this necessity and potential contribution, it is doubtful whether the current WTO legal system can fully support this type of cooperation. Various governmental supports involving the cooperation projects could be determined as prohibited or actionable subsidies as well as discriminatory measures. WTO provisions regarding the special and differential treatment for the developing economies are of no help. This paper identifies legal problems involving agricultural development cooperation between developed and developing countries and explores ways to interpret relevant WTO rules and to amend them in order to solve the problems.

To the extent that international trade and development policy employs legal methods, institutions and participants, there is a need to take into account the role of legal culture. There are many different legal cultures in the world, including the widely found common and civil law traditions, as well as the many non-western legal traditions and sub-traditions found within the hundreds of different legal systems spread across the globe. International law has, however, traditionally eschewed consideration of legal culture—arguing that international law is unique, is sui generis, and as such domestic legal traditions were not relevant. Yet, the humans involved in creating and nurturing international legal fields and institutions will themselves reflect the legal culture of their home states, and will often import aspects of those legal cultures into international law. The same must be true of international development law. In addition, international legal fields, such as international development law, must often work within domestic legal systems, and as such they will directly interact with the domestic legal traditions. It is thus important to understand the interaction between the legal cultures reflected in the relevant part of that international law and in that of the domestic legal system. Such an understanding can be useful in ensuring the effective interaction of the two systems. This paper explores these themes, continuing the author’s past and ongoing consideration of the role of legal culture in international law, including its role within institutions such as the World Trade Organization.

This article examines the objective of sustainable development, listed in the preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization. It discusses the relationship between rights to special and differential treatment included in various WTO agreements and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that is part of sustainable development.

This article introduces the concept of "international development disputes". It argues that despite the well-acknowledged vagueness of 'development' as an operative legal concept, there exists a set of international legal differences (primarily international economic disputes, but not exclusively so) that should be identified as international disputes about development. This family of international disputes is discussed and categorized. Recognizing such disputes has implications for the ways in which such disputes are dealt with. In particular, the effectiveness and legitimacy of using judicial methods to address development disputes should be reconsidered.

This paper provides a brief discussion of law and development from Islamic perspectives and looks to the role of Islamic banking and finance as a means of alleviating poverty and promoting economic development in the Muslim world.