STRIVING FOR
EQUAL JUSTICE
How the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation uses talent,
technology and partnership to advance its mission
“The Rule of Law is a beautiful and special thing. It is not something you can see or touch directly. But you can know when the Rule of Law is there – and when it is not.”
These words, which speak powerfully about a system that underpins prosperity, harmony and equality, are not inscribed on a plaque outside a courtroom or beneath a statue of Lady Justice. They are the introduction to a children’s colouring book.
The ABCs of the Rule of Law, written and illustrated by LexisNexis volunteers, is part of a remarkable effort to introduce young people in Liberia to the importance of the rule of law.
“The rule of law is everything,” says Sonnie Lawrence who with Teresa Jennings, head of Rule of Law Development for LexisNexis Legal & Professional, spearheaded the book’s production. “Without it, we cannot live the life we should, so having kids know about it at an early age is the most important thing we can do.”
Lawrence, a young Liberian woman and founder of Agents of Positive Change, a literacy awareness non-profit, first met Jennings in Washington DC, at an event celebrating the US State Department’s Mandela Washington Fellowship For Young African Leaders (Lawrence was among them). The two women made an instant connection and, soon after, the colouring books were being distributed to schools in Liberia.
It didn’t stop there. Jennings arranged for a shipping container full of books and learning equipment to be sent to Liberia. After the container became a school, a building was constructed on the site to provide storage space, utility rooms and bathrooms. And Lawrence has ambitious goals. “I’m trying to persuade the minister of education to have the books in all schools in Liberia,” she says.
Much of the funding and other support for Lawrence’s work came from the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, a public charity set up in 2019 by LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which is part of RELX. With projects ranging from training for South African judges to working to eliminate systemic racism in the US legal system, the foundation’s purpose is to advance the rule of law around the world.
Equally important, however, is a goal that it shares with Lawrence: to raise awareness of the vital importance of the rule of law. “It provides the framework for a civilised society,” says Ian McDougall, the foundation’s president. “But if you don’t educate people about why it’s important, they won’t think it’s important.”
These words, which speak powerfully about a system that underpins prosperity, harmony and equality, are not inscribed on a plaque outside a courtroom or beneath a statue of Lady Justice. They are the introduction to a children’s colouring book.
The ABCs of the Rule of Law, written and illustrated by LexisNexis volunteers, is part of a remarkable effort to introduce young people in Liberia to the importance of the rule of law.
“The rule of law is everything,” says Sonnie Lawrence who with Teresa Jennings, head of Rule of Law Development for LexisNexis Legal & Professional, spearheaded the book’s production. “Without it, we cannot live the life we should, so having kids know about it at an early age is the most important thing we can do.”
Lawrence, a young Liberian woman and founder of Agents of Positive Change, a literacy awareness non-profit, first met Jennings in Washington DC, at an event celebrating the US State Department’s Mandela Washington Fellowship For Young African Leaders (Lawrence was among them). The two women made an instant connection and, soon after, the colouring books were being distributed to schools in Liberia.
It didn’t stop there. Jennings arranged for a shipping container full of books and learning equipment to be sent to Liberia. After the container became a school, a building was constructed on the site to provide storage space, utility rooms and bathrooms. And Lawrence has ambitious goals. “I’m trying to persuade the minister of education to have the books in all schools in Liberia,” she says.
Much of the funding and other support for Lawrence’s work came from the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, a public charity set up in 2019 by LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which is part of RELX. With projects ranging from training for South African judges to working to eliminate systemic racism in the US legal system, the foundation’s purpose is to advance the rule of law around the world.
Equally important, however, is a goal that it shares with Lawrence: to raise awareness of the vital importance of the rule of law. “It provides the framework for a civilised society,” says Ian McDougall, the foundation’s president. “But if you don’t educate people about why it’s important, they won’t think it’s important.”
Principles worth protecting
Among the artworks in the Louvre museum in Paris, the Hammurabi stele is one of the highlights. Just over seven feet tall, it’s a simple black basalt column at the top of which a carved relief shows a king, Hammurabi of Babylon, raising his hand in deference to a deity. But while the figures are finely carved, the significance of the column goes far beyond its artistic merit.
That’s because directly below the king is inscribed one of the world’s oldest legal texts. Written several thousand years ago, it sets out hundreds of laws covering everything from crimes and misdemeanours and family law to the regulation of economic drivers, such as farming, commerce and property ownership.
Importantly, the Hammurabi stele captures two principles essential to the rule of law. By inscribing the legal code on a stone pillar, Hammurabi fulfilled one – transparency of law – and by ensuring that he himself was bound by the code, the king established the second – equality under the law.
These are among four pillars – the other two being independent judiciary and accessible legal remedy – that LexisNexis Legal and Professional placed at the heart of its work when it created the Rule of Law Foundation.
However, the company’s efforts to strengthen legal systems around the world began long before the foundation came into existence. “It started with people like me and others like the International Bar Association becoming interested in this,” says McDougall. “Then the more I got into it, the more I could see the foundational nature of the rule of law – and without strong foundations you have a crumbling structure, so it seemed important to look into.”
The eyeWitness to Atrocities app
In 2015, for example, LexisNexis Legal & Professional and the International Bar Association (IBA) launched the eyeWitness to Atrocities app, which collects, verifies, catalogues and stores images for use as evidence in a court of law while safeguarding the individuals who have taken them.
As the eyeWitness app demonstrates, LexisNexis understands the importance not only of funding and partnership but also of harnessing the skills of its volunteers and the company’s strength in data and analytics: LexisNexis hosts the secure repository and data encryption for the materials collected through the app. And it uses the same technology with which it secures confidential material for its clients.
Destroyed building in Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Photo captured by a user with the eyeWitness to Attrocities app, September 2022.
“I saw immediately that this was an opportunity to bring our core business assets, expertise and technology to the app,” recalls Nigel Roberts, the foundation’s vice-president and secretary.
As a data-driven enterprise, LexisNexis also realised it could do some compelling number crunching. This led to the creation in 2016 of the Rule of Law Impact Tracker, an interactive tool designed to demonstrate links between the rule of law and various socio-economic measures.
To create the tool, LexisNexis brought together data from the World Justice Project, the World Bank and Transparency International. The resulting correlations were striking. “The stronger the rule of law, the stronger your per capita GDP and therefore the wealthier your country is,” says McDougall. “And with other socio-economic measures like infant mortality rates, life expectancy and corruption, the correlation sticks.”
However, when it comes to numbers, the trends are worrying. According to the World Justice Project’s 2023 Rule of Law Index, more than six billion people live in a country where between 2022 and 2023 the rule of law weakened.
“I’ve not experienced a period when the rule of law has been under attack as it is now,” says Mark Ellis, IBA executive director. “That’s why we need to focus not only on upholding and maintaining the rule of law but also on actively promoting the rule of law and why it matters.”
Destroyed building in Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Photo captured by a user with the eyeWitness to Attrocities app, September 2022.
Destroyed building in Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Photo captured by a user with the eyeWitness to Attrocities app, September 2022.
The Rule of Law Impact Tracker
Fighting back
To protect and promote the rule of law at a time when it is under threat in many places, the foundation engages in projects in a wide range of regions, from North America and Europe to Africa and Oceania. And the scope of the foundation’s activities is as broad as its geographical reach.
Projects include compiling tax laws and regulations in Rwanda and Ethiopia and updating and expanding a phone app that helps workers in Bangladesh to understand their rights and seek legal assistance if needed. Meanwhile, in Spain, it provided translation for the vast number of documents needed in trial during strategic litigation to protect a former child trafficking victim.
However, what all the foundation’s projects have in common is that they advance at least one of four core pillars of the rule of law.
For example, a project to train American teenagers promotes two (transparency of law and equality under the law). The work of Sonnie Lawrence in Liberia promotes three (transparency, equality and accessible legal remedy). And in Uganda, the development, deployment and maintenance of a judgement writing tool for use across the country’s judiciary promotes all four.
McDougall summarises the foundation’s strategy: “First, it’s to deploy our core skills – what we are already good at – and deploy them to advance one or more of the pillars of the rule of law,” he says. “And second, it’s to work with partners who can bring something to the project.”
The different elements of this strategy are evident in a project the foundation embarked on in 2023. In this initiative, lawyers from RELX, LexisNexis Legal & Professional, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and RX teams conducted a global review of laws that could be discriminatory against people with leprosy, a disease that still affects hundreds of thousands worldwide, in terms of both the impact to their health and the stigma attached to the condition.
The foundation worked with two partners, the IBA and the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations (ILEP), and also harnessed the company’s core skills. “Researching these leprosy laws was a great example of using our expertise,” says Roberts, who led the project.
Teresa Jennings with the Uganda Judiciary IT team
The leprosy project addresses three of the four pillars of the rule of law. By unveiling previously hidden discriminatory laws, it increases transparency of law. This has given the ILEP the knowledge needed to use advocacy efforts to target these injustices and to work with governments to eliminate legal discrimination, which promotes equality under the law and makes it easier to access legal remedy.
Meanwhile, in a US-based project all four pillars are addressed. The U.S. Voting Laws & Legislation Center is an online tool that provides free access to US federal and state election and voting laws, legislative developments and updates. In doing so, the tool advances transparency and judicial independence and, since knowledge is power, promotes equality and expands access to legal remedy.
The website was the brainchild of LexisNexis CEO Mike Walsh. “He saw that there was a lack of unbiased factual information around elections and voting in the US,” says Alison Manchester, who is on the project steering committee. “We hear so much on the news and social media, but there’s no one place to go to get the facts and to validate the truth.”
As well as identifying the knowledge gap, Walsh saw that as one of the biggest providers of legal information and insights LexisNexis was uniquely positioned to develop and maintain the website.
For Manchester, the project was also a good fit. As vice-president of primary law for LexisNexis, her group is responsible for case law statutes, regulation and other core legal content, including voting and election law. “That was a nice connection,” she says.
But beyond being able to use her professional skills, what excites Manchester about her volunteer work on the project is something bigger. “It’s really about providing access to the law in an unbiased nonpartisan way and giving people the tools to understand what’s going on,” she says. “And by doing that, we’re supporting democracy.”
Teresa Jennings with the Uganda Judiciary IT team
Teresa Jennings with the Uganda Judiciary IT team
Giving a powerful gift
In deploying the company’s core skills through the foundation’s work, benefits flow back to LexisNexis. “We have 11,000 employees across the globe, many of whom are looking for opportunities to volunteer,” says Roberts. “And this really motivates people.”
He recalls the appetite for helping research laws on leprosy. Just hours after posting a request for assistance on the company’s internal project dashboard, a team of 14 volunteers had been assembled.
For Manchester, working on the U.S. Voting Laws & Legislation Center has connected her to new colleagues. “Collaboration with parts of the business we don’t normally talk to is a unique opportunity to expand the network and understand more about those areas,” she says.
In the end, of course, the biggest motivation for volunteers is to see the impact they are making through their work on rule of law projects.
And sometimes, that impact can be counted in hard numbers: For example, the eyeWitness app has enabled more than 65,000 photos, videos and audio files to be captured and stored. And since its launch, the U.S. Voting Laws & Legislation Center website has had almost 20,000 landing page hits, has run more than 2,600 searches and has enabled more than 8,700 jurisdictional comparisons to be made and more than 2,100 documents to be viewed.
Such numbers make all the hours volunteers put in worthwhile, says Manchester. “A fundamental tenet of the rule of law is transparency,” she says. “And you can’t follow the rule of law unless you know what it is. So making the law public and easily readable is critical for democratic government.”
For many rule of law projects, digital technology is a key tool in making that transparency possible. But while the technology has moved on, the foundation is performing a service that in essence differs little to the one performed thousands of ago when a Babylonian king had his legal code inscribed the surface of a black basalt column.
To read more about the Rule of Law Foundation's projects, click the button below:
Built with Shorthand