Speakers:
- Lam Ho, Founder and Executive Director, Beyond Legal Aid
- Vivek Maru, CEO, Namati
- Jhody Polk, Founder and Director, Legal Empowerment and Advocacy Hub
Moderator: Sukti Dhital, Executive Director, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights
This opening session introduces critical legal empowerment (theory, methods, impacts) and its embrace of community-based efforts to democratize and redistribute legal power. Panelists discuss how critical legal empowerment builds upon, but also offers something distinct from other progressive legal approaches, including its focus on creating space for communities to directly engage in legal work and the legal profession. The discussion also situates the burgeoning US legal empowerment movement within the context of the wider and more established global movement.
