Improving the justice sector: Law and institution-building in Sierra Leone

Efficient, fair, and low-cost legal systems can have a variety of positive effects. The legal system regulates personal actions and economic transactions, with the aim of resolving disputes, enforcing rules of conduct, providing certainty to economic actors and ‘justice’ to citizens. In providing quick and cheap resolution of welfare- and productivity-reducing disputes, an effective legal system can have direct economic impacts. Any private sector or public sector initiative is ultimately subject to the rules and procedures specified by the legal system. Improving the justice sector thus can lead not only to enhanced safety and less crime, but to efficient regulation of business activity, an environment more conducive to entrepreneurship, and overall growth.