Reforming Justice A Journey to Fairness in Asia

Author: Livingston Armytage
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107013827
Published In: May 2012
Format: Hardback , 382 pages
Jurisdiction: Asia ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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'Reforming Justice' calls for justice to be repositioned more centrally in evolving notions of equitable development. Justice is fundamental to human well being and essential to development. Over the past fifty years, however, overseas development assistance - foreign aid - has grappled with the challenge of improving 'the rule of law' with underwhelming and often dismal results around the world. Development agencies have supported legal and judicial reforms in order to improve economic growth and good governance, but are yet to address mounting concerns about equity and distribution. Building on new evidence from Asia, Livingston Armytage argues that it is now time to realign the approach to promote justice as fairness and equity.

• Provides solutions to improve justice reform endeavor around the world

• Analysis of the philosophical justifications for reform exposes the pervasive influence of ideology in the justification of development

• Examines a substantial body of new evidence from Asia, an area which has hitherto been the subject of little scholarly analysis

Acknowledgements	xv
1 Introduction	1
1 Roadmap	5
2 Reform purpose	6
3 What is justice – and why is it important?	9
4 Evaluating endeavour	14
5 Case studies of practice	19
6 Generalised findings and key empirical propositions	22
7 Conclusions: a theory of justice reform	24
Part 1 Judicial reform enterprise	27
Introduction to Part 1	27
2 History and context	29
1 Introduction	29
2 Context and history	29
a. Three moments or five waves?	31
b. Early days: USAID's law and development	32
c. Structural adjustment, the ‘Washington Consensus’ and poverty reduction	33
d. ‘Rule of law’ revival and democracy	34
e. But what is the ‘rule of law’ orthodoxy – a blind man's elephant?	37
f. Shihata's long shadow – judicial reform at the World Bank	38
g. Governance and institutionalism: from enabling to capable state	40
h. A more comprehensive approach: embracing social and human dimensions	42
i. Towards equity?	43
j. Fragility, safety and security	45
3 Conclusions	47
3 Nature and critique of reforms	49
1 Introduction	49
2 Nature of reforms – the ‘standard package’	49
a. ‘Thin’ or ‘thick’ reform?	51
3 Mounting perceptions of disappointment – the ‘performance gap’	53
4 Reinvention	58
a. Convergence with human rights and empowerment	58
b. Engagement in the informal customary sector and legal pluralism	64
c. Political economy – DfID's approach to power	65
d. Acknowledging the distributional dimension of judicial reform	68
e. Constitutionalism and the politics of allocation	71
5 Conclusions	75
4 Theories of reform	77
1 Introduction	77
a. Theory, practice and the use of dichotomy	77
2 Theorists – philosophy and justification	79
a. Foundations of classical thinking: justice, equality and equity	80
b. Visions from the Enlightenment of the state and individual	81
i. The fulcrum of liberalism	84
ii. The tipping point of neo-liberalism – and the contest over economics	85
iii. The significance of liberalism	87
c. The contest of modern philosophy	88
i. Institutionalism	88
ii. North's rules of the game	89
iii. Sen's transformative vision of human capability	91
3 Conclusions	97
5 Empirical evidence	100
1 Introduction	100
2 Sufficiency of the economic justification for development	101
a. The role of empirical evidence in the theory: practice dichotomy	102
b. Historical evidence of the market economy	103
c. Development's failure to ensure equitable growth	105
d. Conviction, ideology and the selectivity of empirical validation	109
3 Justice and growth – a synopsis of empirical determinants	111
a. Transplantation and ‘legal-origins’ debate	112
b. New comparative economics and good governance	113
c. Are institutions trumps?	115
d. Precepts of independence – checks and balances	118
e. Empirical inquiry – torch beams in the night	120
4 Conclusions to Part 1 – building a better theory	123
Part 2 Evaluation	129
Introduction to Part 2	129
6 Evaluating aid	133
1 Introduction	133
2 Key concepts	134
3 Purpose and models	135
a. Professionalisation	137
b. From Paris to Accra – improving development effectiveness	138
c. Millennium Development Goals	139
d. Managing for development results	141
e. Critique of MfDR	143
4 Arenas of debate	146
a. Project management and the logical-framework approach	146
b. The paradigm war over evaluative models	149
c. The positivist approach to impact	150
d. Constructivism and participatory evaluation	154
5 Meta-evaluation of practice – and the ‘development evaluation gap’	157
6 Conclusions	160
7 Evaluating judicial reform	164
1 Introduction	164
2 Measuring performance	166
a. Indicators and metrics	166
b. Quality or quantity of justice?	169
c. Monitoring frameworks	171
d. Critique of frameworks	173
3 Synthesis – gaps in performance and evaluation	177
a. ‘Scholars in self-estrangement’	178
b. Blair and Hansen – ‘rule of law’ under the spotlight	178
c. The nature of evaluative commentary	179
4 Deficiency in evaluative practice – the ‘evaluation gap’ in judicial reform	181
a. Omission and the missing middle	181
b. Hammergren: the ‘fireman's syndrome’	182
5 Meta-evaluation – the double gap in evaluation	183
6 Filling the gaps – two proposals for evaluating judicial reform	185
a. Measurement of rights – a work in progress	187
7 Conclusions	189
Part 3 Case studies of the Asian reform experience	193
Introduction to Part 3	193
a. Three case studies	194
b. Methodology	195
c. Structure	196
8 ADB's judicial reform experience in Asia: 1990–2007	197
1 Introduction	197
2 Background	199
3 Findings and analysis	200
a. Policy framework	200
i. Governance policy	200
ii. Poverty strategy	202
iii. Long-term strategies	203
b. Implementation	204
i. Mitchell's puzzle – evolving justifications for reform	206
ii. Justification – an ever-increasingly heady mix	207
iii. Reform activities	208
iv. Reflections on experience	211
c. Evaluation systems	211
i. Developmental considerations – what the ADB says, and what it does	213
ii. Evaluation of technical assistance	214
iii. Evaluation of judicial reform	215
4 Conclusions	215
a. Significance for the purpose of judicial reform	216
b. Significance for the evaluation of judicial reform	218
9 AusAID’s program in Papua New Guinea, 2003–2007	221
1 Introduction	221
2 Background	222
3 Findings and analysis	225
a. Journey to aid effectiveness – ownership, capacity and change	225
b. Managing for development results	228
i. Planning	228
ii. Performance monitoring	231
iii. Evaluation, impact, results and contribution	233
c. Strategic approaches	236
i. Restorative justice and the bias towards the formal sector	236
ii. Change management and incentives	239
4 Conclusions	240
a. Significance for the purpose of judicial reform	240
b. Significance for the evaluation of judicial reform	244
c. Ethnomethodological insights	247
10 Voices of the Asia Pacific experience	251
1 Introduction	251
2 Background	251
3 Findings	253
a. Securing justice	254
b. Case-management reform and delay reduction	254
c. Promoting access to justice	255
d. Ethics, integrity and judicial accountability	257
e. Judicial education	258
4 Editorial and ethnomethodological analysis	259
a. Goals	259
b. Leadership	260
c. Community	261
d. Donors	262
e. Independence	263
f. Training and capacity-building	264
g. Data	265
h. Results	266
5 Conclusions	267
a. Significance for the purpose of judicial reform	268
b. Significance for the evaluation of judicial reform	269
c. Ethnomethodological insights	270
6 Summing up Part 3	272
7 Generalised findings and observations from practice	275
11 The way forward	279
1 Putting this theory into practice	286
2 A taxonomy of just reform: court-focused and development-wide	288
3 Next steps	291
Annexes	293
Annex A Frameworks of measurement	295
1 Measuring justice – court-level measures	295
a. ABA-CEELI – Judicial Reform Index	295
b. Vera indicators for the justice sector	296
c. IFES Rule of Law Tool	296
d. European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice	297
e. Productivity Commission Reports on Government Services, Australia	297
f. Judicial quality: the Netherlands – RechtspraaQ	298
g. International Framework for Court Excellence, and Rule of Law Index	298
2 Measuring justice – government-level measures	299
a. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index	300
b. The Freedom House World Survey	300
c. The Global Integrity Index	300
d. The Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer	300
e. The Transparency International Diagnostic Checklist	301
f. DataGob	301
g. The World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index	301
h. World Governance Assessment	301
i. The World Bank's ‘Doing Business’	302
j. Worldwide Governance Indicators	302
3 The challenge – balancing clarity with simplicity	303
Annex B Part 3: Empirical methodology and justification	305
1 Methodology	305
2 Participation	306
3 Ethnomethodological reflection	307
4 Annex B.1 – Chapter 8: methodology	308
5 Annex B.2 – Chapter 9: methodology	309
6 Annex B.3 – Chapter 10: methodology	310
Annex C Sample extracts of PNG newspapers, 2003–2004	312
Annex D Chapter 9: AusAID inventory of documents	314
Bibliography	319
Articles, books, reports and websites	319
Treaties and other international materials	350
Index	352

Livingston Armytage
The Centre for Judicial Studies and The University of Sydney

Advance praise: 'Despite decades of effort and billions of international assistance dollars invested in development of competent, fair, and independent legal and judicial systems, there remain far too few examples of real and enduring success. In his new book, Livingston Armytage argues passionately that the core problem has been a failure to embrace the centrality of justice in legal and judicial reform efforts. Many of us in the development community continue to view universal rights-centric approaches to development with a degree of skepticism, but the insistence that advancing justice, however locally conceived and however achieved, is a central concern of all human beings is surely correct. Reforming Justice is an important contribution to the increasingly critical process of re-examining the assumptions and logic that underlies conventional assistance in this difficult area of international assistance.' William Stadden Cole, The Asia Foundation