A Peace Corps for Lawyers: From Legal Services to the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative
Authors: John Hagan, Ron Levi
This project is an historical and empirical study of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) and its life course implications for its voluntary lawyer participants. It represents one of the first attempts to investigate rule of law reforms from the bottom up. By focusing on a process called legal alternation, which links together research on social movements, life course sociology, and cause lawyering, this effort will generate an empirical base for studying international law reform efforts.
The research will make use of a variety of quantitative as well as qualitative material, including archival records, oral history interviews with OEO Legal Services figures, interviews with CEELI leadership figures and past and present liaisons, and field interviews with volunteer lawyer liaisons.