26 - 27 April 2010: 5th Annual Meeting of the Hague Rule of Law Network & Measuring Access to Justice and Legal Empowerment of the Poor

26 - 27 April, 2010  
CAOP, Lange Voorhout 13, The Hague

Under the auspices of the Hague Rule of Law Network (HRoLN) and in close cooperation with the Tilburg-based research group behind the project Measuring Access to Justice, HiiL organised a two-day conference in The Hague on the theme ‘Measuring Access to Justice and Legal Empowerment of the Poor’. The conference was developed in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Conference objectives
- To leverage and align the academic and policy understandings
  on measurement of access to justice and legal empowerment; 
- To identify appropriate, effective and comprehensive strategies
  for measuring access to justice from the demand-side
  perspective.

Click here to download the final programme and speakers information.
Click here to download the discussion paper.

Speakers 
- Pim Albers, Dutch Ministry of Justice (invited)
- Maurits Barendrecht, TISCO
- Thorsten Beck, European Banking Center, Tilburg University
- Adriaan Bedner, Van Vollenhaven Institute
- Nina Berg, UNDP
- Juan Carlos Botero, World Justice Forum
- Ab Currie, Canadian Ministry of Justice
- Martin Gramatikov, TISCO
- Stephen Golub, University of California at Berkeley Law School
- Erica Harper, IDLO
- Laura Klaming, TISCO
- Simeon Koroma, TIMAP for Justice
- Miglena Kuneva, former EU commissioner for consumer protection
  (European Commission)
- Malini Laxminarayan, TISCO
- Vivek Maru, World Bank
- Mascha Matthews, UNDP
- Tom McInerney, IDLO
- Tiernan Menen, Open Society Justice Initiative
- Chris Moris, TBC
- Sam Muller, HiiL
- Zaza Namoradze, Open Society Justice Initiative
- Elnur Nasibov, Praxis Azerbaijan
- Marta Poblet, Autonomous University of Barcelona (invited)
- Orna Rabinovich, Haifa University
- Avrom Sherr, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,
  University of London 
- R Sudarashan, UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok
- Jennifer Tsai, ABA
- Jelle van Veenen, TISCO
- Jin Ho Verdonshot, TISCO
- Corry van Zeeland, TISCO
- John Zeleznikow, Victoria University, Australia

Outline Conference Programme

26 April 2010

Morning | Measuring the Costs and Quality of Justice
- Welcome and introduction
- Presentation of different measurement methodologies
- Parallel sessions on approaches followed by discussions
  on feasibility, validity, policy relevance, inter-cultural
  applicability
- Plenary discussion – A Vision for Measuring Justice

Afternoon | Measuring Legal Empowerment
- Presentations of views from the field: What are the current
  needs for measurement?
- Small group discussions: How to define and measure legal
  empowerment?
- Summary of the group discussions and outline of a research
  program on the measurement of Legal empowerment
- Brief presentations of the main issues from the group
  discussions

27 April 2010

Morning | Implications
- Presentation on Rule of law implications
- Presentations on measuring access to justice impacts of
  criminal paralegal projects
- Interactions between legal empowerment and rule of law
- Expert panel on the future of legal empowerment

Afternoon | 5th Annual Meeting Hague Rule of Law Network
- The future development of the network
- Expansion and regional chapters? 
- The development of an advanced ‘Rule of Law Knowledge
  Platform