Critical law and development

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