Opportunity, Inclusion, and Equity as Imperatives for Meaningful Law and Justice-Guided Development

In our globalized world, it is commonplace to throw around the concept “development” in a manner that assumes that, somehow, we all share the same understanding of what it means. In reality, there is no universally accepted defi nition of the concept. As has been observed,1 a broad reading of development, such as that off ered by the report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, situates development within the context of economic growth as “desirable social and economic progress,”2 based on the idea that “without [economic] growth and social change one cannot speak of development.”3 Scholars such as Walter Rodney put people at the center of the development process. From this perspective, at the individual level, development implies “increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, self-discipline, responsibility and material well-being.”4 Despite the subjective nature of those categories, Rodney maintains that “it is indisputable that the achievement of any of those aspects of personal development is very much tied in with the state of the society as a whole.”5 The emphasis on people in the development process also received the scholarly approval of Julius Nyerere, a respected African statesman and the fi rst president of Tanzania.6 According to Nyerere, “roads, buildings and increased crop output are not development but tools of development”;7 for these to be development, they must help to “develop the minds and understanding of people” or be used “for other