Do courts aid or inhibit productive business activities? The perspectives on law and courts considered in chapter 1 lead us to conflicting expectations. On the one hand, some writers stress inequality and view courts as unlikely to undermine prevailing inegalitarian political and economic relationships. Such a perspective would lead us to view courts as structures furthering economic domination in the developing world. Wealthy individuals and powerful economic institutions are viewed as able to obtain far more favorable decisions from the courts than other litigants both because of the content of the law and the nature of legal procedures.

Other writers discussed in chapter 1 take a liberal view of law which leads them to stress the corrupted nature of the current legal environment in much of the developing world. Legal structures are seen as stifling entrepreneurship and privileging state over private property rights. Powerful individuals and groups benefit from prevailing structures, but this is not seen as advancing the general goal of encouraging economic development and productive initiatives.

Are courts and the law too subservient to business or too hostile? The experience of Egypt (and secondarily of the Arab states of the Gulf) suggests that both pictures are too starkly drawn. While courts are hardly oases where prevailing power relations are irrelevant, the evidence presented in this chapter, especially when viewed in conjunction with the findings presented in the previous chapter, indicate that courts are surprisingly accessible to wide sections of the population. Indeed, from the perspective of business actors, the courts are probably too responsive to non-elites.