This volume brings to light a variety of previously ignored ways in which law can be central to the causes and structure of poverty, and explores new legal arenas and theories that could form the basis of a transformative use of law in order to reduce poverty. The contributions range over a wide terrain, including international human rights conventions, domestic constitutional and statutory provisions, and the law relating to social insurance and social assistance. Poverty is examined as being in certain respects legally constructed (i.e. there are ways in which specific laws create and...

The researchers who have written this volume are clear not only that mass poverty is still the leading humanitarian crisis in developing countries, but that, if effective policies are to be put in place, the national elites who control governments and economies need to be convinced of both the reasons why reducing poverty is in their own and the national interest, and that public action can make a difference. Remarkably, in the rapidly growing literature on poverty, this volume is the first to use survey techniques to explore Third World elites' attitudes to poverty.
Five cases -...

This is an innovative collection that brings together two issues that are not always related: measures to reduce poverty, and respect in practice for human rights. Most of the contributors are from Latin America--a region characterized by terrible human rights violations, and the co-existence of relative wealth alongside immense absolute inequality. Law, they argue, is no panacea for the intractable problem of poverty. Instead it can be an indispensable basis for social mobilization, which, in turn can be strengthened by socially engaged and critical social science. Paying particular...