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ABSTRACTThe march of rights into international development offers, on the face of it, a more progressive and transformational paradigm. Contemporary rights expressions are more expansive and diverse than their nineteenth‐century forebears. Inevitably though, rights‐based approaches have been criticized, with claims that rights have contributed to a minimization and individualization of distributive justice and participatory democracy or even been appropriated for profoundly anti‐transformational ends. This article argues that the critics need to be taken seriously, but that their complaints suffer from many of the familiar problems with critical theory and post‐developmentalism. Instead, it is posited that the frame of critical modernity allows scholars and practitioners to better understand, chart and constructively critique the uptake of rights in development. This reflexive standpoint also allows one to focus on those dimensions of rights approaches that remain under‐developed but carry the greatest potential, namely notions of citizenship, agency and accountability.

Despite the flourishing of judicialisation of rights across the world, scepticism is not in short supply. Critiques range from concerns over the democratic legitimacy and institutional competence of courts to the effectiveness of rights protections. This article takes a step back from this debate and asks why should we establish or persist with judicial review. For reasons of theory, methodology, and practice, it argues that closer attention needs to be paid to the motivational and not just mitigatory purposes for judicial review. The article examines a range of epistemological reasons (the comparative advantage of the judiciary in interpretation) and functionalist reasons (the attainment of certain socio-political ends) for judicial review and considers which grounds provide the most convincing claims in theory and practice.

Spanning two centuries and five Nordic countries, this book questions the view that political lawyers are required for the development of a liberal political regime. It combines cross-disciplinary theory and careful empirical case studies by country experts whose regional insights are brought to bear on wider global contexts.