Rules, Rubrics and Riches highlights the limitations of the traditional school of law and development that was based on a mainstream understanding of economic development, emphasizing notions of rational man at the micro level and the superiority of modernity and unilinear models of economic progress at the macro level. It offers a frame for 'law and development' thinking by specifically posing the question: how do social sciences perceive the role of the law in international development?
Discussing a range of local, national and international institutions the focus of the book turns from the law-making/law-breaking paradigm to law's relation to social norms.