​Law appears in many different ways. While some legal orders are codified, others refer to oral traditions and/or ritual arrangements, some limit the writing by the application of cases, others by the codification of (distinct) contracts or they choose comprehensive forms of codification. In most nation states, however, only codified law is official state law. Codified state law, though, is in most developing countries a heirloom of the colonial past and since the days of independency in many cases only slightly revised. Unfortunately, this constellation undermines the public legitimacy of state law; and the "law in the books" deprives the illiterate and poor parts of society from access to justice. 

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Projects on the promotion of justice, human rights or the rule of law operate thus in a minefield, as besides the public officers also other political agents such as religious leaders or traditional chiefs might claim their own rights. They often refer to other legal orders with different sources of legitimacy, other forms of ascertainment and competing political histories. Such constellations might become especially critical in states, where those in power trouble with their own political past, their own legitimacy and the legal order based upon.

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The growing juridification of development cooperation finally, manifest in a growing amount of foreign project law that is flowing into rural settings in order to steer the access to limited project goods, adds a further critical layer to the promotion of the rule of law.

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