Stanford University

Legal Education in Developing Countries: Daring to Play the Long Game

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Abstract:

This paper argues that given what we know about the role of law and legal institutions at early stages of development and what we know about the difficulties in creating or reforming public institutions, legal education is one of the most cost-effective areas in which to invest rule of law assistance.  We know enough about the rough sequencing of law and legal institutions at early stages of development to avoid big and stupid mistakes.  We also know enough about the significant challenges in building credible public institutions generally, and legal institutions specifically, to suggest that all-in funding of the building of formal legal institutions at early stages of development is imprudent. Therefore, in light of what we know about sequencing and the challenges of creating or reforming public institutions, legal education competes well compared with other potential rule of law interventions as a prudent and effective investment at earlier stages of development and beyond.  

 

Speaker Bio:

jensen
Erik Jensen is a professor of the practice of law at the Stanford Law School, co-director of the law school's Rule of Law Program, and a CDDRL faculty member. A lawyer trained in Britain and the United States, he has, for the last 20 years, taught, practiced and written about the field of law and development in 20 countries. He has been a Fulbright scholar, a consultant to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and a representative of The Asia Foundation, where he currently serves as a senior law advisor. His teaching and research activities explore various dimensions of reform aimed at strengthening the rule of law, including the political economy of reform; the connections between legal systems and the economies, polities and societies in which they are situated; and the relationship of Islam to the rule of law.

Jensen lived for 14 years in Asia and was an active participant in policy dialogues in South and Southeast Asia. From 1996 to 1998, he led the governance section of an Asian Development Bank-funded study called "Pakistan 2010," which examined subjects including judicial and legal reform, countering corruption, governance process, civil service reform, decentralization and empowering the country's citizenry. In September 1999, he served as co-team leader of a 35-member consulting team which prepared an extensive report on "Legal and Judicial Reform in Pakistan" for the Asian Development Bank.

Jensen's recent past activities include: completing a research project funded by the Ford Foundation that surveys Pakistani and Indian perceptions of doing business across their acrimonious border; serving as an outside expert in an evaluation of a World Bank project on judicial reform in Venezuela; designing and teaching a research workshop, at Stanford Law School, on judicial reform in developing countries; and serving on the advisory board of two international rule-of-law projects for the World Bank in Mexico and Argentina.

Among his recent publications are "Confronting Misconceptions and Acknowledging Imperfections: A Response To Khaled Abou El Fadl's 'Islam And Democracy'" published in the Fordham International Law Review (2003), and Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press, 2003), which he edited with Thomas C. Heller. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz endorsed Beyond Common Knowledge with the admonition, "No scholar or policymaker should utter the words 'rule of law' without first reading this volume."

Jensen holds a JD degree from the William Mitchell College of Law and an LLM degree from the London School of Economics.

Erik Jensen

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C144
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-4287 (650) 725-0253
0
Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School
jensen-1.jpg JD

Erik Jensen holds joint appointments at Stanford Law School and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He is Lecturer in Law, Director of the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School, an Affiliated Core Faculty at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and Senior Advisor for Governance and Law at The Asia Foundation. Jensen began his international career as a Fulbright Scholar. He has taught and practiced in the field of law and development for 35 years and has carried out fieldwork in approximately 40 developing countries. He lived in Asia for 14 years. He has led or advised research teams on governance and the rule of law at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank. Among his numerous publications, Jensen co-edited with Thomas Heller Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press: 2003).

At Stanford, he teaches courses related to state building, development, global poverty and the rule of law. Jensen’s scholarship and fieldwork focuses on bridging theory and practice, and examines connections between law, economy, politics and society. Much of his teaching focuses on experiential learning. In recent years, he has committed considerable effort as faculty director to three student driven projects: the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) which started and has developed a law degree-granting programs at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), an institution where he also sits on the Board of Trustees; the Iraq Legal Education Initiative at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani (AUIS); and the Rwanda Law and Development Project at the University of Rwanda. He has also directed projects in Bhutan, Cambodia and Timor Leste. With Paul Brest, he is co-leading the Rule of Non-Law Project, a research project launched in 2015 and funded by the Global Development and Poverty Fund at the Stanford King Center on Global Development. The project examines the use of various work-arounds to the formal legal system by economic actors in developing countries. Eight law faculty members as well as scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute are participating in the Rule of Non-Law Project.

Director of the Rule of Law Program, Stanford Law School
CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
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Seminars

State Fragility and Extreme Poverty: What Can be Done?

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Please note that this CDDRL seminar will be held on Wednesday. 

 

Abstract:

Recent estimates place half of the world’s poorest people in fragile and conflict-affected states by 2015. As the world moves towards the next phase of global development goals, which includes a central emphasis on eradicating extreme poverty, it will be necessary to understand the challenges for countries in the most difficult contexts. Is addressing and resolving fragility a condition (or precondition) for successfully addressing poverty?  Or, are there ways to significantly and sustainably reduce poverty even while countries remain fragile?

USAID is seeking to answer these questions as it recommits to working with its partners to end extreme poverty by 2030. And while we acknowledge that ending extreme poverty will not be easy, progress and gains already achieved over the past couple of decades have made us certain that it is possible. As the global community coalesces around this goal, USAID seeks to increase shared understanding of the nature of extreme poverty, where there has been success and why, and what we are already doing and will need to do differently to catalyze and invest in global solutions.

 

Speaker Bio: 

Alex Thier
Alex Thier is USAID’s assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL). The PPL Bureau is USAID’s center for policy development, strategic planning, learning and evaluation, and partner engagement. From June 2010‐ June 2013, Thier served as assistant to the administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs, overseeing USAID’s two largest missions in the world.
Before joining USAID, Thier served with the U.S. Institute of Peace as senior rule of law adviser and director for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2005‐ 2010. While at the Institute, he co‐authored The Future of Afghanistan (2009) as well as The Next Chapter: The United States and Pakistan, the 2008 report of the Pakistan Working Group. Thier also served as director of the Institute’sConstitution Making, Peacebuilding, and National Reconciliation project, during which he advised numerous governments and civil society organizations engaged in ongoing constitutional drafting and national reconciliation exercises. Thier was also a principal staffer on the Institute’s Genocide Prevention Task Force, and a coauthor of its final report, Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers. The recommendations from this report formed the backbone of President Barack Obama’s 2011 Directive on Mass Atrocities.
Thier previously served as director of the Project on Failed States at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. From 2002 to 2004, he was legal adviser to Afghanistan’s Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. He has also worked as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, a legal and constitutional expert to the British Department for International Development, and as an adviser to the Constitutional Commission of Southern Sudan.
From 1993 to 1996, Thier worked as a U.N. and NGO official in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Afghan civil war. He also served as coordination officer for the U.N. Iraq Program in New York.
An attorney, Thier was a Skadden fellow and a graduate fellow at the U.S. National Security Council’s Directorate for Near‐East and South Asia. He received the Richard S. Goldsmith award for outstanding work on dispute resolution from Stanford University in 2000.
Thier has a J.D. from Stanford Law School, a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Brown University.
Discussion Paper: Ending extreme poverty in fragile contexts
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Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3nd Floor
616 Serra St
Stanford, CA 94305

Alex Thier Assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning Assistant to the Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning United States Agency for International Development
Seminars

Big Data Predictions - Using Your Skills for Good

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Tim Catlin was formerly a CTO/GM at Zynga and previously VP of Engineering at Adchemy and CTO at Netcentives, which he helped take public. Tim is now VP of Engineering at Change.org.
 
He is a startup veteran of all shapes and sizes. He has now been in 7 startups holding roles from VP Eng to CTO to Founder. In between, he worked at Apple and Intuit (online banking) and Tree.com (parent of lending tree, doing marketing optimization). He even did a stint working in applied research on the pre-cursors to the web known as hypermedia.
 
Abstract:
Change.org is an open platform empowering people to create the change they want to see all over the world. We will give an overview of the company and how we use data science and technology to achieve our mission. We will also challenge you to use your skills for good purpose by what you choose to work on, who you choose to work for, and what causes you support and champion.
Tim Catlin VP Engineering Change.org
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Thailand’s Long Endgame: Crises, Coups, Prospects

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Co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Southeast Asia Program

The recent reversal of democracy in Thailand has been rapid, dramatic, and increasingly thorough. Generals in civilian guise now manage the country. Their coup in May restored, in effect, a Cold War-era nexus of the military, the monarchy, and the bureaucracy. That trinity thwarted communism and enabled development but fell victim to its own success, as formerly marginalized Thais became vocal stakeholders seeking better lives. Democracy and growth spawned new wealth and new players, triggering sharp conflicts among elites competing for the first time for mass support. In the fading twilight of a gloried monarch, Thai politics before and since the 2014 coup amount to a long and no-longer latent endgame over the weighting and balancing of royalty, bureaucracy, and military, and the implications for democracy. Prof. Pongsudhirak will construe the contest and assess the stakes for Thailand, Southeast Asia, and the larger world.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is an associate professor in Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science. A prolific and prize-winning author, his latest writings include articles on Thai politics in the Journal of Democracy and on the Mekong region in Foreign Affairs. He taught at the University of Yangon earlier this year and has been a visiting scholar at, among other places, SAIS (2011) and Stanford (2010). His alma maters include the London School of Economics (PhD) and UC-Santa Barbara (BA).

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Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall Central, 3rd Floor.

Stanford, CA 94305

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-3052
0
FSI-Stanford Humanities Center International Visiting Scholar

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is a high-profile expert on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand today  He is also a prolific author; witness his op ed, "Moving beyond Thaksin," in the 25 February 2010 Wall Street Journal.

Pongsudhirak is not senior in years, but he is in stature.  His career path has been meteoric since he earned his BA in political science with distinction at UC-Santa Barbara not long ago. In 2001 he received the United Kingdom's Best Dissertation Prize for his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on the political economy of Thailand's 1997 economic crisis.

Since 2006 he has held an associate professorship in international relations at Thailand's premier institution of higher education, Chulalongkorn University, while simultaneously heading the Institute of Security and International Studies, the country's leading think tank on foreign affairs.

His many publications include: "After the Red Uprising," Far East Economic Review, May 2009; "Why Thais Are Angry," The New York Times, 18 April 2009; "Thailand Since the Coup," Journal of Democracy, October-December 2008; and "Thaksin: Competitive Authoritarian and Flawed Dissident," in Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia, ed. John Kane et al. (2008).  He has written on bilateral free-trade areas in Asia, co-authored a book on Thailand's trade policy, and is admired by Southeast Asianist historians for having insightfully revisited, in a 2007 essay, the sensitive matter of Thailand's role during World War II.

He was a Salzburg Global Seminar Faculty Member in June 2009, Japan Foundation's Cultural Leader in 2008, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) in 2005.  For ten years, in tandem with his academic career, he worked as an analyst for The Economist's Intelligence Unit.

Director, Institute of Security and International Studies Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Seminars

Trends in Disability in a Super-Aging Society: Adapting the Future Elderly Model to Japan

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Japan has experienced pronounced population aging, and now has the highest proportion of elderly adults in the world. Yet few projections of Japan’s future demography go beyond estimating population by age and sex to forecast the complex evolution of the health and functioning of the future elderly. This study adapts to the Japanese population the Future Elderly Model (FEM), a demographic and economic Markov microsimulation model that projects the health conditions and functional status of Japan’s elderly population in order to estimate disability, health, and need for long term care. We develop the model based on the recently released multiple waves of the Japan Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) survey, the Japanese version of the Health and Retirement Study-like family of internationally comparable surveys. Using detailed data on a panel of Japanese aged 50-75 starting in 2007, we tailor the health transition matrix of the FEM model to the Japanese context, estimate conditional mortality probabilities consistent with Japanese national vital statistics, and use a state-transition Markov model to project trends in the disability and functioning of Japan’s future elderly population.

Brian K. Chen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services Policy and Management at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. A health economist, Brian completed his Ph.D. in business administration in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. Before beginning his current faculty position at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Chen was the 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellow in Asian Health Policy at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and earned a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School in 1997.

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Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall Central, 3rd Floor.

Stanford, CA 94305

 

Brian K. Chen, J.D., PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Health Services Policy and Management, Arnold School of Public Health University of South Carolina
Hawre Jalal, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Primary Care and Outcome Research Stanford University School of Medicine
Michael Hurley Stanford School of Medicine
Lena Shoemaker Research Associate, Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research Stanford University
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD Associate Professor Stanford School of Medicine
Seminars

Mind the Gap? The International Sources of Sovereignty and State Weakness

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Abstract: 

Why have some developing countries faced persistent challenges at extending state authority throughout their territories? The consequences of incomplete governance are often severe in terms of public order, public goods, and economic growth, which raise the question of why ungoverned spaces remain without effective authority. Although there are many reasons why states leave broad swathes of their territory ungoverned, existing scholarship has overlooked the role of international politics. This dissertation demonstrates the importance of international factors in accounting for variation in state weakness, and argues that enemy states can subvert or deter the exercise of state authority near the borders of their neighbors. External interference can create or sustain ungoverned spaces in the target state, and yields policy benefits to the enemy state. Drawing on original data and a new measure of state authority, I support this argument with a cross-national statistical analysis that examines variation within countries, and a natural experiment from the case of Thailand that identifies the causal effect of hostile neighbors on state authority.


Speaker Bio:

lee
Melissa Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research interests bridge the subfields of international relations and comparative politics, and include the international causes and consequences of state weakness; statebuilding; conflict and security; and political and economic development. Her dissertation asks why some developing states leave parts of their territory ungoverned, and argues that state weakness near state borders is a function of hostile regional neighborhoods. Specifically, she argues that neighboring states can subvert or deter the exercise of state authority, resulting in the emergence or persistence of ungoverned space. She employs a variety of methods in her research, including statistical methods, quasi-experimental techniques, geospatial analysis, archival research, and field interviews.

Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and other research centers at Stanford University. She is a former research consultant for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

Seminars

Technology and the Fight Against Corruption in India

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ABSTRACT

The anger against corruption in India has led to many new experiments at fighting it and technology is increasingly a part of such experiments – be it in the form of large e-governance projects or a small grassroots mobilization. Some of these initiatives have led to substantial improvement in performance whereas others remain highly contested. In this talk, Vivek will discuss a few experiments by governments and by civil society and the debate around impact of technology in fighting corruption.

SPEAKER BIO

I joined the Liberation Technology Program as the Manager in February 2011 after completing my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, I worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences I have written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).

In working with these campaigns, I realized the widespread disparities in the provision of basic public services in India. This led me examine how Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, developed extensive commitment to providing such services to all its residents in my doctoral dissertation. Oxford University Press will shortly publish my book based on the dissertation entitled, "Delivering services effectively: Tamil Nadu and Beyond".

As a full-time activist, I also experimented with various IT platforms to make the campaigns effective. This interest brought me to the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford. I am currently leading a research project entitled "Combating corruption with mobile phones" that is in currently on a pilot mode in 5 states of India.

Wallenberg Theater

Bldg 160 Rm 124

Vivek Srinivasan

Encina Hall
Office C149

(650) 561-6039
0
picture-4171-1416339295.jpg PhD

I joined the Liberation Technology Program as the Manager in February 2011 after completing my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, I worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences I have written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).  

In working with these campaigns, I realised the widespread disparities in the provision of basic public services in India. This led me examine how Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, developed extensive commitment to providing such services to all its residents in my doctoral dissertation.  Oxford University Press published my book based on the dissertation entitled, "Delivering services effectively: Tamil Nadu and Beyond" in 2014.

As a full-time activist, I also experimented with various IT platforms to make the campaigns effective. This interest brought me to the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford. I am currently leading a research project entitled "Combating corruption with mobile phones".

Visiting Scholar
Former Academic Research & Program Manager, Liberation Technology
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

The Emergence of Multistakeholder Internet Governance Based on Democratic Values

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ABSTRACT


How can and how should we govern a global resource like the online space? How can stakeholders (governments, businesses and civil society) participate on equal footing and “in their respective roles”? And how can democratic values inform all governance practices, when the constituency is potentially everybody, most decisions are highly complex and interdependent and when the shared resource is a conglomerate of private and public assets? These are the questions scholars and practitioners in the internet governance field explore and experiment with since the UN World Summit of the Information Society in 2003 brought internet governance to the attention of diplomates and governments around the world. In this seminar Max Senges will review the historic development of internet governance as well as discuss current challenges and opportunities in building an effective governance ecosystem for the transnational digital space.

 

SPEAKER BIO

innovationconvention maxsenges
Max Senges (1978) works as Program Manager for Google Research and Education, where he leads an Internet of Things program and is also managing the Faculty Research Awards in the Policy & Standards field under Vint Cerf. He participates in the internet governance sphere since the first WSIS 2003 and bootstrapped the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles between 2008 and 2010.

More recently he has published “Internet Governance as our shared responsibility” and “Ensuring that Forum Follows Function” in “The Roadmap for Institutional Improvements to the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem” jointly with Vint Cerf, Patrick Ryan and Rick Whitt.

Senges holds a PhD in philosophy from the Information and Knowledge Society Program at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Barcelona as well as a Masters in Business Information Systems from the University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Berlin).

Wallenberg Theater

Bldg 160, Room 124

Max Senges Program Manager, Research, Google
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

ICTs and Democratization: What's Working and Why?

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ABSTRACT

Mr. Price will discuss finding from the recent publication Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Study, which was initiated in the wake of the recent, rapid rise in the use of digital technology among citizens and civil society organizations offers the possibility of strengthening citizens’ voice in politics, carving out new political space for activism and promoting more government accountability. It is clear that these technologies are increasingly complementing citizens’ political participation, changing interrelationships between citizens, organizations, and public institutions, and expanding notions of political behavior and participation. NDI understands how to identify and support the types of citizen participation that contribute to democratization, but the exact role and results of technology use in this process are less clear. The rising use of technology to increase citizens’ access to information and provide avenues of communication to public officials in hopes that this will transform how politics is practiced seems driven by apparently underlying, yet largely untested, assumptions about technology’s ability to increase the quantity, quality, and democratizing influence of citizen participation. Despite the exuberance for new technologies, there is not enough data available on the impacts they have had on the political processes and institutions they are intended to influence in emerging democracies. This creates additional challenges in designing and implementing programs.

SPEAKER BIO

Koebel Price is NDI’s Senior Advisor for Citizen Participation. He has 20 years’ experience in leading programs that promote transparency and accountability in government, citizen participation and civil society development, political party strengthening and free and fair elections. Mr. Price has worked in over 30 countries, served as chief of party for U.S. government-funded programs in the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa and managed the democracy and governance portfolios of international development organizations. Domestically, he has served as a Political and Legislative Director with the Minnesota AFL-CIO, part of America’s largest trade union confederation. Prior to that, he was trained in community organizing at the Midwest Academy and led grassroots advocacy campaigns for issue – based civil society organizations. In his current role, he supports NDI’s civil society strengthening efforts globally, providing strategies, tools, techniques and training to NDI’s staff members and partner organizations to support and strengthen citizen organizing and political activism in new and emerging democracies. Mr. Price authored the recent publication Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Study, which examines the role technologies are playing in democratization programs

Wallenberg Theater

Bldg 160 Room 124

Koebel Price Senior Advisor, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs ( NDI)
Seminars

Information and Liberation

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ABSTRACT
We are familiar with "information technology" and with “liberation technology" but perhaps still need to ask ourselves to what extent information and liberation make natural partners. This primarily theoretical talk will explore why it is tempting to champion information and its technologies in the cause of liberation, yet why it may also be problematic.

SPEAKER BIO
Paul Duguid is an adjunct full professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. In recent years he has also held visiting positions at Queen Mary, University of London, Copenhagen Business School, the École Polytechnique in Paris. In the 1990s, he was a consultant to senior management at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). While there he was co-author of The Social Life of Information with John Seely Brown, the director of PARC. Recent work has focused on the multiple conceptions of information and confusions they can give rise to.

Paul DuGuid School of Information UC Berkeley
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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