What Do We Know about Legal Empowerment? Mapping the Evidence

Abstract

World governments have embraced ‘legal empowerment’ as an end in itself and as an essential element in the fight against poverty. Civil society groups work to advance legal empowerment around the globe but, to date, there is not a comprehensive understanding of the impact of those efforts. This article offers the first review and mapping of existing evidence on legal empowerment. We identified and analyzed 199 studies in total. These studies span every major continent and address a wide range of legal empowerment interventions, such as legal literacy, community-based paralegals, and use of right to information laws. The breadth and richness of this body of work suggest we should revisit previous perceptions that there is little evidence on what legal empowerment can achieve. Stronger agency—both people’s willingness to act and actual action—as well as increased legal knowledge are the most common positive impacts reported in this collection of evidence. The evidence also suggests legal empowerment programs can lead to acquisition of legal remedies, effective conflict resolution, and even improvements in health and education outcomes. Nearly ninety studies find positive impacts of legal empowerment programs on institutions—changes in law, policy or practice at various levels of administration. After exploring distributions and trends in the evidence, the article concludes by identifying gaps and questions for further inquiry to guide future research and, ultimately, promote stronger, more evidence-based practice.