Comparative Law for What Kind of Development ?

Disillusioned about the possibility to promote development through legal reforms, and may be scared by the political overtones of the debate, in the last decades comparative legal scholars have kept on the sidelines of the law and development debate. Alternatively, they have advocated the total demise of the law and development enterprise. This chapter explores the options available to comparative legal scholars now that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are mobilising the world scientific community in devising means to achieve them by 2030. Disengagement and radical criticism are still legitimate stances. Though, a third option is to try to use comparative knowledge to start a new dialogue between legal scholars from the Global North and the Global South. The rejection of the export-import logic and the acknowledgement of different concepts of development should provide a common ground. Beyond this, a comparative analysis could prove useful in three areas: firstly, to assess the implications of the interpretative criteria each country adopts to select the interventions aimed at implementing the Goals; secondly, to provide an in-depth understanding of the implementation contexts for the Goals; thirdly, to compare the evaluation processes assessing progress with the Goals. The chapter provides guidance on how a comparative analysis could be carried out in each of these three areas.