Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Community Paralegal Model and Access to Justice

诉诸司法和法律赋权干预措施对于各国打击暴力和贫困以及普通民众应对一系列社会经济挑战至关重要。本项目将探讨社区律师助理模式的兴起，作为增加诉诸司法和法律赋权的一种手段。由于本研究将考察成功的捐助者-公民社会法律赋权伙伴关系，因此它将与学者和政策制定者有关，这些学者和政策制定者对如何创建特定地点的法律知识以及如何将社区律师助理模式付诸实践的政治感兴趣。本研究将采用第一手和第二手资料的历史和档案研究来追踪社区律师助理组织的创建，其组织历史和特征，以及其运作的法律和政治框架的变化。将与社区律师助理、当局和利益相关者进行访谈和参与者观察。该项目将考察律师助理工作的政治、历史和社会背景，律师助理如何重塑对法律的理解，以及随着时间的推移，律师助理工作如何在整个相关政策领域产生反响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Access to justice and legal empowerment interventions can be crucial for states to combat violence and poverty and for ordinary people to address a range of socioeconomic challenges. This project will explore the rise of the community paralegal model as a means of increasing access to justice and legal empowerment. As this study will examine successful donor-civil society legal empowerment partnerships, it will be relevant to scholars and policymakers interested in how site-specific legal knowledge is created and the politics of how the community paralegal model are put into practice. This research will employ historical and archival research of primary and secondary sources to trace the creation of community paralegal organizations, their organizational histories and features, and changes to the legal and political frameworks in which they operate. Interviews and participant observation will be conducted with community paralegals, authorities, and stakeholders. This project will examine the political, historical, and social context of paralegal work, how paralegals reshape understandings of law, and how that paralegal work reverberates throughout relevant policy arenas over time.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.