Promoting the Rule of Law in Stability Operations: Myths, Methods, and the Military

“Promoting the Rule of Law” in other countries has long been a development goal in US foreign policy. Since the 9/11 attacks, the US military has discovered that it must engage in development and nationbuilding, to include promoting the “rule of law,” in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fragile or failed states.

A little over a year ago, the Department of Defense issued DoD Directive 3000.05, “Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations.” This Directive made the startling change of declaring that “stability operations are a core US military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support.” The Directive also states that the military shall give stability operations “priority comparable to combat operations.”

In the Directive, stability operations are “military and civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to conflict to establish or maintain order in states and regions.” One of the stated long-term goals of stability operations is to help develop indigenous capacity for securing the “rule of law.” However, “rule of law” is carefully left undefined. This lack of definition for the military is not surprising, given that the various US civilian agencies who have been engaged in promoting rule of law have had little success in developing a comprehensive definition of what it is they are attempting to do.

While the Directive is new, the military missions it describes are not. Since World War II, the US military has maintained civil affairs units to perform many of the tasks required in stability operations, including what are now called rule of law operations. As might be expected, the field experience gained since 2001 has resulted in considerable development of civil affairs rule of law doctrine and training.

This paper will examine some of the definitional conundrums and myths of what is termed by Carothers, Upham and others as the “rule of law orthodoxy.” It will examine some methods that can be used by US military lawyers, civil affairs personnel and civilians to establish essential elements of a basic rule of law system. Finally, the paper will examine the roles of the military and civilian agencies in promoting rule of law during stability operations.

Customary Law in Afghanistan: Problems and Possibilities for Jirgas  

In January 2007 the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to create a joint Commission on Jirgas, specifically to formulate a joint strategy on militancy in Afghanistan. Presidents Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai will attend jirgas, which will be first held separately on both sides of the border. A joint jirga will follow if the two sides conclude that there is a need for one. The commission will hold meetings with tribal leaders before submitting recommendations to the government regarding modalities for holding of jirgas.

Ethnic Pashtuns living on both sides of the border have for centuries used jirgas to resolve their internal disputes and jirgas have become emblematic of Afghanistan’s transitional legal order. But what is the status of a jirga within Afghanistan’s pluralist legal system? How do they operate and with what results? How do jirgas meld with – or conflict with - formal sources of law in Afghanistan? What might be the unintended consequences of elevating the jirga as a policy tool without fully understanding it?

This paper is based on research by the author in Afghanistan’s southern provinces and seeks to explore both the possibilities and uses for jirgas as policy tools for conflict resolution and their current problems when viewed from the standpoint of modern, formal law.

“Rechtstaat” Aspirations Versus Accomplishments: Rethinking Recent Rule of Law Efforts in Iraq

[I]n Iraq, we have committed approximately $1 billion to train and equip the men and women of Iraq's new national police force to better protect and serve their fellow citizens. We have spent nearly $400 million to strengthen the rule of law across all of Iraq , helping the Iraqi people to reform their system of legal education, to secure their country's many courtrooms and to frame their new democratic constitution.

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved … The Iraqi criminal justice system is weak, and the U.S. training mission has been hindered by a lack of clarity and capacity. It has not always been clear who is in charge of the police training mission, and the U.S. military lacks expertise in certain areas pertaining to police and the rule of law.

Since March 19, 2003 , when Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced, literally thousands of individuals, in nearly two dozen governmental and nongovernmental entities, business enterprises, and organizations, have worked on rule of law activities in Iraq . These entities, enterprises, and organizations have achieved varying degrees of success in Iraq , but often work without a common, shared concept of what constitutes rule of law. They have also lacked a concerted strategy with, by, and for the people and Government of Iraq to achieve a “rechtstaat;” rule of law in Iraq , or an Iraqi state in which the rule of law prevails. This paper will:

• Discuss the historical challenge to define, let alone achieve, rule of law or “rechtstaat,” in general, or to accomplish it in Iraq in particular;
• Examine Iraq ’s rule of law heritage, or lack thereof, and the constitutional, legislative, judicial and executive organs which must be supported to achieve the rule of law in Iraq ;
• Discuss the evolution of rule of law challenges post 2003 in Iraq ; and
• Propose criteria for Iraqi “rechtstaat” status – a baseline of security and order in Iraqi society, harmony if not unity of effort towards accomplishing identified rule of law objectives, and continuity of effort in the way ahead.

The Coordination Myth: Inter-agency and Inter-donor Rule of Law Operations in Post-Conflict Countries

In post-conflict countries there tend to be a multitude of donor countries as well as a variety of USG agencies active in rule of law (ROL) programming. Each typically brings its own agency/national agenda and applies its own lens (e.g., civil code/common law, problem saliency) for viewing, diagnosing and addressing perceived problems. There is rarely agreement on goals, desired end state, appropriate development process, respect to be accorded indigenous institutions, time horizon or exit plan, and no way to apply an overall systems approach to the interconnections of a legal system. Inter-donor and inter-agency conflicts can easily overshadow the host country’s interests. Even when the will is there, if the host country legal system is based on the Civil Code or Islamic law, or has a large customary component, donors may have little understanding of or appreciation for the system they hope to influence. If there are security obstacles, even those in-country may have little opportunity to ground-truth their assumptions. Donor political considerations may also constrain solutions; e.g., problems manifested in the judicial branch may be only symptoms of corruption in the executive that is not openly acknowledged. When symptoms are defined as causes, the underlying problem cannot be solved. In all, results are at best piecemeal and at worst counterproductive. Failure of interagency and inter-donor “coordination” is often identified as the culprit, but coordination meetings, especially when the host country is minimally or not at all involved, are not a mechanism that can resolve underlying differences over both goals and means. Coordination only allows adjustments at the margin. There is no good solution to the general level of confusion—beyond greater donor honesty, a dose of humility, and some respect for the desires of the host country legal personnel and regard for the possibilities for sustainability of local institutions.

The Perils of Privatized Marriage

This paper considers whether it is appropriate for society to continue to police and regulate family relations through the law of marriage. A growing number of scholars and policymakers suggest that society should accommodate multiple understandings of family relations held by religious communities. Recognizing that state marriage law plays an important protective function, these proposals would allow for multiple understanding of marriage by different religious communities so long as “we are careful to balance that pluralism with protections for women and children.”

This paper argues that this balance will be a very difficult one, indeed. Social science studies about patterns of intimate partner abuse and child abuse in religious communities reveal a complex picture that includes pockets of elevated risk among some religious minorities. These studies also demonstrate that some religious leaders are reticent to empower victims to exit abusive relationships. My contention is not that being a member of a religious community makes one more likely to be a victim of domestic violence or child abuse. Rather, I contend that if abuse does occur in a context, the victim of that abuse will have less access to one important source of state protection, civil family law.  I conclude with some thoughts about the practicality of unwinding civil and religious dimensions of marriage without losing the state’s protective capacities.

Just what is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty?”

This paper addresses, from the perspective of comparative ethics, some of the implications for liberty when the polity regulates morality through legal mechanisms.

The regulation of behavior for exclusively moral ends impedes the exercise of fundamental liberties on the basis of particular moral and religious customs and beliefs. However, determining what constitutes a fundamental liberty under the US Constitutional framework has proved to be a tenuous enterprise. When there is an absence of a complete enumeration of rights, many morally-relevant pursuits of life and liberty may not be protected, if the courts defer the task of expanding the scope of judicially-recognized liberties.

The traditional model in the United States , of judging a particular right to be fundamental on the basis of it being "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” is, from a moral perspective, doubly problematic. Such an analysis attempts to decipher legally what ought to be the case—what should constitute a fundamental right derived from the nature of the protections of our federal system and the Constitutional text—based on a claim about historical facts (what is or has been the case). This poses an immediate moral problem, since in the realm of defining fundamental notions of liberty, what is the case is not necessarily related to what ought to be the case. The second prong of the analysis poses the proper question (what is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty as present in our system of government) but the Court has largely deferred from making these determinations, which are theoretical moral and political questions. This suggests further development of legal protections for fundamental liberties requires broad articulation of specific liberties within the framework of founding documents and legislative processes. Advancing jurisprudence about the proper scope of fundamental liberties is necessary to determine the limits of the legal enforcement of behavior on purely moral grounds.

Legal Development in Context: China Versus Its Northeast Asian Neighbors

"Although the prevailing rhetoric in the field of law and economic development seeks to tie successful economic development to fairly specific sets of legal system attributes, most commonly the "rule of law," commentators have begun to note the fact that China's rapid economic development began when China's modern legal system was still in its infancy. Moreover, while China's legal system has significantly improved since high-speed economic growth began, economic growth still seems to be out-pacing legal system reform, rather than being dependent upon it. While this may come as a surprise to those with experience in other parts of the world, and while it ought to present a challenge to prevailing theory, it should come as no surprise to those who have followed the history of law and economic development in China's Northeast Asian Neighbors. This paper will outline important attributes of Northeast Asia's legal systems during their decades of high-speed economic growth, then compare and contrast that 'Northeast Asian model' with the current situation in China."

Institutional Factors Determining the Gap between Laws in the Books vs. Laws in Action: An Analytical Framework for Improving Judicial Effectiveness

This paper aims at identifying the jurimetrics-based indicators linked to the more effective implementation of criminal law, thus reducing the gap between the laws in the books and the laws in action. A case study showing impact indicators of judicial reforms are presented below detailing the factors enhancing effective legal implementation.

Transformation of the Judiciary in the Central and Eastern European Countries

The definition of the legal status of judges aptly exemplifies what is called the “chicken and egg problem”: Is it possible to shape the behaviour of judges by granting them a strong independent position, or must the social behaviour of judges change first, and then their position can be strengthened by legal guarantees? This question was not only vital to the judicial reform in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 90s, but is revived now in the context of secondary revolutions like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia or the recent constitutional upheaval in Kyrgyzstan. The success of the implementation of legal doctrines from Western Europe favouring judicial self-government depends very much on the answer to this question. There is strong evidence that judges educated in the socialist system are not able to adapt to the demands of a new transparent jurisdiction. The problem is how to renew the judiciary without recurring to methods contrary to the rule of law.

International Legal Development and National Legal Change in the Fight against Corruption

The paper will point out both preconditions and obstacles for legal change by using the example of anti-corruption-policy. It addresses causes have ignited the international legal development that made the 1990s the first decade to witness the emergence of corruption as a truly global political issue. This development was less a reaction to corruption having changed qualitatively or quantitatively. Instead of the object, the perception has changed along with the interests of many states. We examine the sources that energize legal change on the national level in focusing on a group of states that have faced and still face dramatic political, economic and legal transformation: the transition states in Eastern Europe . The particular situation of transition brings about particular problems of corruption requiring particular efforts. Finally we examine the means and instruments that both national lawmakers and international organizations use to promote legal change in the transition states of the East. We will see, that legal change on the national level has more complex preconditions than legal development on the international level: While latter is initiated by rational interests, the former requires more than mere rationality: It depends on socio-cultural preconditions that law and institutions themselves cannot provide for.

Jewish Law and Legal Change

The case of Jewish legal change in the nineteenth century proves instructive for adducing the relationship between law and community. Up until Jewish emancipation in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century, European Jewish communities were largely legally self-

contained and autonomous. With emancipation came the question of what law should govern Jews — secular or law, and if Jewish law, what kind. Several different approaches evolved in different areas to address this tension – change from above as exemplified by the Napoleonic “Sanhedrin”; change imposed by Jewish secular intellectuals as exemplified in the German “Wissenschaft des Judenthums”; change as the organic growth of a community through history, as exemplified by the conservative wing of German Reform; and change as impossible, as exemplified by some segments of Orthodoxy and expressed in the concept

of “daat torah”. The overall conclusion is that that changes in Jewish in the nineteenth century depended on social conditions and on what the community was willing to accept. The result was the shattering of the Jewish community and its law into a number of competing sub-communities which in turn perpetuated themselves by developing their own legal traditions.

The Challenge of Religious Fundamentalism in the Modern World

Secularist critiques of the multiple global religious movements commonly branded as "fundamentalist" often reduce or instrumentalize their religious fervency to social conservatism, a reactionary withdrawal from the modern world, or a guise for political ambitions. This paper will argue that particularly in the post-Cold War era, religion has increasingly become the primary lens by which many people worldwide view and order (or desire to order) their family, community, society, state, and the international order. While there exist many cases in which religion qua religion is subordinate to other identities and motivations, fundamentalism represents one mode of religion that believers and sometimes institutions can genuinely adopt. Scholars and policymakers seeking to understand global religious resurgence and its impact and implications must not automatically dismiss the religious claims and worldviews put forth by fundamentalists of various stripes, or they risk misreading their true intent. This essay will assess the nature of contemporary fundamentalism and consider what risks, if any, it poses for democratic governance and stability in both individual nation-states and the international system. It will also suggest ways in which the more violent and exclusivist tendencies of fundamentalism can potentially be defused.

Judicial reform in Afghanistan

Judicial reform is one of the priorities of donor-led justice sector reforms in Afghanistan. A recent assessment of the Afghan judiciary found that the current state of the judiciary is fragile. One judicial reform expert sums it up this way: “Compared to Cambodia, Afghanistan is 10-15 years behind the curve. What makes Afghanistan interesting, however, is that it is poised in the balance.” His recent assessment of the Afghan judiciary found that up to 40% of judges have no formal educational credentials and over 60% have no formal induction as judges – stark, but not surprising figures. This is a whole generation of legal actors who are missing the basic grounding in law and professional mindset. At least in comparison to Cambodia, some of the older generation survived and there is some shared memory of functioning legal institutions in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 70s.

This paper reviews the institutional history of the judiciary in Afghanistan in particular, its relation to the Sharia Faculty at Kabul University, the institution that produced most of the earlier generations of judges. The paper then analyzes the current, more chaotic situation of judicial appointment and promotion and the factors that weaken the judiciary.

The paper concludes with some reform initiatives, including the construction of the long-awaited National Legal Training Center, funded by the Italian government. The Center is located inside the main gate of the Kabul University campus and when operating, is intended to provide one year’s training for law graduates planning to become judges and prosecutors, as well as serving as a training venue for serving judges. Under the Bonn Agreement, Italy was designated as the lead donor nation for justice sector reform under Ambassador Yolanda Brunetti, a political scientist. While the building is nearly complete, the content and future of its operations is unclear.

Human and Environmental Security in the Sahel: A “Small Ball” Strategy for Democracy?

My presentation bridges two efforts. First, I will address how the human security paradigm reveals the challenges to U.S. national security strategy in its promotion of democracy. Unfortunately, there have been myriad interpretations and definitions of human security, so it has come to mean everything to everyone. For example, when security professionals of powerful nations use this term, they arouse suspicions of cloaking interventions and neo-colonialism in the name of protection. I argue, however, that the human security paradigm fosters a holistic and empathetic approach towards understanding the security environment. It is interesting that many areas of the world that are faced with grave human insecurities are also transitioning to democracy. To fully understand this challenge requires an in-depth exploration of democracy and the challenges posed by regimes that are transitioning to democracy. Much of the argument of this portion of my presentation is from my co-authored book, The Fight for Legitimacy: Democracy versus Terrorism. Understanding the implications of democratization in the context of these serious human insecurities is a critical first step towards crafting good policy.

Second, I will demonstrate the importance of using a human security approach to better understand the roots of conflict and instability in the Sahel, primarily examining the cases of Niger and Chad. Just as the “small ball,” not the home run, wins baseball games, the way ahead for the Sahel continues to be tireless, smart, and patient work based on critical analysis and optimism. This discussion draws heavily on a collaborative paper that combines political science, biology, human geography and climatology perspectives towards understanding human security and the strong connection between human survival and the environment. This paper uses on-the-ground experience and interviews, political analysis, and geographically-centered research to understand how the environment greatly impacts all areas of human security (as explained by the UNDP and measured by the 2000 Millennium Development Goals).

Progress across all human insecurities is, indeed, achievable in the Sahel and elsewhere, but it will require tenacious efforts and strategic patience from all involved. There is no one-size-fits all solution to the challenges faced around the globe. This point is particularly important as states work to foster legitimacy and provide services for their societies in the midst of radical extremist alternatives. While some form of democracy is attainable for every state, it will not replicate the United States, and it will surely not happen over night. Instead, it will resemble that which is legitimate and capable in accordance with the society, culture, history, and economy from which it springs.

Re-regulating Japan: From Manners to Rules?

‘It’s not the regulations that are tough; it’s the reality of having lost our moral sense: From manners to rules’ (Chiyoda-ku, 2003)

After a decade and a half of stagnant economic growth, Japan is an economy in transition - but is it becoming a post-regulatory state? The developmental (or regulatory) state legacy remains visible. Claims that Japan is ‘converging’ toward EU or US-style modes of regulation in particular areas of economic activity need to be tested empirically.

Within Japan, the regulatory discourses of the last decade have been somewhat diverse, but one key thread has been the need to mobilize law and legal institutions more effectively to both open the Japanese market and re-ignite economic growth. A dramatic manifestation of this thinking is the Justice System Reform Agenda launched in 1998 which seeks to completely re-make all of Japan’s major legal institutions as more efficient and market-friendly service providers. Many foreign observers see (or want to see) the re-regulation of Japan as representing the shift toward more, and more visible, law (eg Marshall, Ginsburg, Feldman). A related assertion is that a vigorous ‘rights consciouness’ has taken root in Japan and is dramatically transforming the legal order.

Both domestic and foreign observers seem to generally concur with Haley’s thesis that the pre-modern and 20 th century Japanese state was characterized by an unusually strong reliance on informal social norms – the paradox of law without sanctions – and that formal law and legal institutions were designed as marginal accoutrements to social ordering through informal norms and compliance mechanisms. Thus a focus on more ‘law’ in Japan seeks a simple correction to that binary balance between formal/informal and law/social norms.

At the same time, creation of transparent ‘rules’ that can be enforced through formal law and access to legal institutions, particularly litigation, tends to be treated as a proxy for modernity. Thus promoters of Japan’s Justice System Reform agenda, for example, claim that Japan never really realized ‘rule of law’ and can only do so by enhancing the capacity of its legal profession and legal institutions to allow citizens to actively engage in formal legal disputation. New reforms will make rule of law ‘flesh and blood’ (cf Haley and Taylor, 2004). Thus commercial legal and institutional reform in Japan is both a re-regulatory technique and a way of asserting a development narrative for Japan. This latter aspect is important as Japan becomes, during 1996-2006 a new, significant exporter of legal technical assistance to other transitional and post-conflict states.

Applying contemporary regulatory theories to Japan, however, would seem to indicate that more is occurring than simply adding law or legal institutional capacity. A more likely scenario would seem to be that re-regulation of particular areas of the economy is being induced by a cluster of domestic and international forces. The outcomes in particular regulatory domains or ‘spaces’ (per Scott) will depend on the players, the institutional history and the domestic and international drivers affecting that domain of economic activity. As yet we have a very imperfect grasp of how individual regulatory domains are being re-negotiated in the 21 st century, by whom and with what effect.

This paper seeks to describe the re-regulation of a selected number of spheres in Japan between 1996-2006, including the legal profession, corporations, commercial contracts, intellectual property and ODA-funded technical legal assistance. The purpose of the larger project of which this is a part is to try to track, through bibliographic sources and interviews, the shifting regulatory environment in each of the domains identified over the last decade. In particular I examine who now constitutes that regulatory stakeholders for each domain or regulatory space and try to pinpoint the evolution and deployment of key regulatory ideas shaping new regulation in the domain between 1996-2006.

The working assumption of this project is that there is indeed more formal law being deployed in Japan, but that this is only one of a range of newly adopted or re-discovered regulatory techniques and that the actual regulatory ‘mix’ in the different domains researched will be quite diverse. If the regulatory landscapes do emerge as diverse, this would have a number of important consequences for our understanding of both Japan and other economies in transition. Those consequences include but are not limited to:

• Forcing a re-think of the dominant (foreign) characterizations of the Japanese legal system since 1945;
• Articulating a new kind of Japanese domestic governance that is not necessarily uniform, that may feature government and large corporations deploying their power and influence in new ways, and that may mobilize a wide range of regulatory tools and techniques;
• Stimulating debate about how Japanese legal institutions were created and what stimulated or forced the turn to law in the 1990s, with a view to outlining this in coherent way for the development community and for other transitional states.

Law and Development: Lessons from Japan

Discussion of what some would caption the “discourse of rights” in Japan profitably begins with a few basic historical observations. Our use the term “rights” today has historical antecedents. The first is the conception of “rights” as developed in Western Europe from the High Middle Ages. Law in the Western Legal Tradition is thus understood as a system of rights combining three disparate notions, Two conceptions, in private as well as natural law, treat rights as enforceable claims. The third conceives of “rights” in terms of moral entitlement. This tripartite combination is best revealed in the words used for “right” as “law” as well as what is correct and just in Latin (ius), German (Recht) and French (droit). The Western notion of “rights” was first introduced in Japan in the late 19 th century. Japan, however, had replicated much of the European experience enabling Japan, unlike its East Asian neighbors, to adapt successfully Western adjudicatory institutions and a conceptual system of “right” centered private (civil) law. No native parallels existed, however, to Western conceptions of either “natural law rights—enforceable against those who ruled--or a moral entitlement conception of rights. Even within traditional patterns of adjudication, private law claims were “minor matters” that did not mandate their adjudication and enforcement. An emphasis on resolution of such disputes through conciliation and compromise meant that private claims could be properly repressed. Especially discouraged were assertions of claims challenging community solidarity. Community consensus and “harmony” (wa) represented overriding social and political values. The introduction of Western conceptions of “rights” thus challenged the shared habits, beliefs and values--in other words, the culture--of the Japanese community in general and elites in particular. The resulting tensions were especially pronounced during the 1920s and early 1930 as lawsuits became increasingly common. They continue today in a process of both institutional and cultural change. Litigation has long both a well-established means of debt collection, compensation and legal redress for legally recognized harms. Recent data supports the view that Japanese litigate when advantageous, especially in view of costs and delay. Whether the “discourse of rights” in Japan also encompasses the idea of rights as moral claim is less certain Litigation has a political aspect as a means to activate community concern and political action against alleged injury to collective community welfare as a result of private or government acts or omissions. Some in Japan, especially intellectual elites influenced most by Western conceptions of law, seemingly use the language of “rights” in political discourse. The question remains, at least to me, whether this tendency represents a more traditional appeal of communitarian values or a fuller assimilation of Western notion of rights as moral entitlements.

Japan’s Quasi-Jury System (saiban-in seido): Criminal Justice, Democracy, Common People

On 28 May 2004, the Japanese Diet passed the Act concerning lay participation in criminal trials. This law creates a new system where six lay people will sit on mixed courts with three judges hearing serious criminal trials to decide both guilt and sentence. The Act is part of the larger law reform movement in Japan (shiho seido kaikaku) that since 1999 has sought to democratise, liberalise, and internationalise legal institutions in Japan such as law schools, the bar, and the courts. It is the first time since the Japanese jury system was suspended in 1942 that common citizens will have a direct role in criminal justice. Given the strictly domestic nature of the new law (ie, Japanese citizens judging Japanese criminals) it has not received as much international exposure as other reforms. Nonetheless, its potential international impact may be significant as it introduces a new hybrid model of lay participation to criminal justice.

This paper first examines the theoretical rationale for the system and the historical precedents for lay participation in Japan to develop both a positive and negative measure of the new system. Taken from the theoretical promises, it identifies the objectives of improved delivery of criminal justice (‘better justice’) and improved civil participation in the legal system (‘better democracy’). Extracted from historical experience, it cautions about the risks of marginalisation and capture of the system. Second, the paper introduces the basic elements of the new system including the law itself, the anticipated court rules, and the activities undertaken to prepare for the introduction. Third, applying the positive and negative standards against the structural features of the new system and the institutions engaged in implementing it, the paper critiques the saiban-in system’s potential for ‘success’ concluding with a cautiously optimistic forecast.

"Can Weak States Have Strong Courts?"

Russians increasingly distrust their judiciary. This is despite their strong support for judicial independence and their frequent use of courts, despite the dramatic expansion of the jurisdiction of courts, and despite the growing willingness of courts to protect individual rights and rule against the government. I argue that Russians distrust their courts because they lack the knowledge about their chances of successful litigation and because the state authorities don't implement unfavorable court decisions and create a public perception that going to court is a waste of time. When evaluating the work of courts, ordinary citizens express their opinions about the court-friendly capacity of the state, namely, the capacity of public bureaucracies: 1) to obey policies, as pronounced by the high national courts; 2) to be accountable for its activities before the courts; and 3) to enforce routine judgments of local courts in civil and commercial disputes. Russia’s paradox of waning trust in activist courts teaches us that 1) Rights revolutions are impossible to achieve without a capable court-friendly bureaucracy; and 2) judges in weak states must advertise the usefulness of their services to ensure that the general public knows them well and can make judicial empowerment real.

Consolidating Federal Power Under Putin: Reigning in the Periphery

This paper addresses President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to redefine federalism in Russia. Upon taking power in 2000, Putin embarked on an immediate and radical set of legal reforms aimed at reforming center-periphery relations in Russia. Putin’s agenda, which has been attacked in many circles, focused on bringing Russia’s regions under the authority of the central administration. After reviewing the legal reforms in Russia over the past seven years, this paper concludes that Putin’s actions are consistent with the Russian Constitution and provide a sense of order to the country that had been absent during the chaotic period that defined Boris Yeltsin’s later years in power.