Law as Empowerment (Rights-Based Approach)

Abstract

This article examines the turn to human rights in law-and-development scholarship and practice. Human Rights–Based Approaches to Development (HRBADs) seek to transform both development processes and outcomes by making the realization of human rights constitutive of development itself. HRBADs have introduced paradigmatic shifts in law-and-development. They approach law in its power-critical dimension, shifting attention from how States and markets instrumentalize law to how marginalized, impoverished, and oppressed groups can be empowered. They also broaden development beyond economic growth to encompass human dignity and social justice. Finally, they offer a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between law and development, moving beyond the naïve legal instrumentalism of the early law-and-development movement to engage with questions of change, power, and context. HRBADs, however, have not become a new orthodoxy. They remain part of the heterodoxy, where they belong. To preserve their critical edge and avoid preambularization, they must remain a critical perspective on mainstream law-and-development.