Complexity Faced by Legal Clinics in Afghanistan: Addressing the Challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177
Author(s):  
Seyed Ali Hosseini

This article studies the burgeoning legal clinics in Afghanistan and describes the complexity that influences their effectiveness and accessibility. This complexity arises from conflicts among statutory law, Sharia and customary laws, exacerbated by the dual legal education in law and Sharia faculties in the highly challenging environment of the country. The main objective of this qualitative research is to illustrate these challenges faced by pro bono legal aid and legal clinics, and its main claim is that unsettled conflicts between statutory law, Sharia and customs and between legal education systems negatively affect legal aid provision in the country. Legal education, provided by faculties of law and Sharia to suit the aims of the two recognized legal systems of statutory law and Sharia, is considered the internal challenge to the clinical legal service, and the highly adverse environment in which legal clinics operate is considered the external challenge. Since some of the external challenges are related to traditional dispute resolution mechanisms, they are inevitably related to legal and legal education systems, and hence, addressing them improves the effectiveness of the legal clinics. This research uses available data to support its claims. As part of a sustainable solution to the acute shortage of legal aid throughout Afghanistan, legal education should emphasize practical aspects of law, improve curricular development in both law and Sharia faculties, train more female lawyers, use more broadly accepted frameworks of human rights and social justice and highlight the values of voluntarism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Vinnichenko ◽  
E. Gladun

Legal education in the contemporary world is changing. The main influences are linked to developments in transportation and communication and the enmeshing of diverse economies embraced by globalization. Law schools confront more mobile and more ambitious students who wish to experience different jurisdictional practices, to serve the increasingly global business community and to be more competitive. This research examines the modifications required in legal education as a result of globalization with specific reference to law schools in the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.Research on higher education, and legal education in particular, has been growing in recent years, yet there is still a gap in the study and comparison of the specifics of legal education within the BRICS countries. This research makes an attempt to analyze and contrast the current goals, objectives, structure and quality of higher legal education in Brazil, Russia, India and China. The specifics of law schools have been studied over the past twenty years in correlation with economic, cultural and education trends in BRICS and globally.Based on research literature, practitioner literature and legislative sources, this paper outlines common and special features of lawyer training in BRICS. The prime similarity of the legal education systems in BRICS are global education trends and the influence of the U.S. and UK education systems. Each BRICS country experienced an “explosion” in the popularity of legal education and, consequently, the urgent need to reform the education process in order to attain better quality and affordability. The result of these reforms, taking place in each country from 1950 to today, has become the growing differentiator of the educational institutions, turning them into “elite” and “mass” law schools.The facets of legal education in Brazil, Russia, India and China are attributed to their national policies as well as the historical development of the educational institutions and their perception of what specific lawyer skills and competencies are demanded by the legal market and national population. We conclude that the structure and quality of legal education as well as the requirements and monitoring tools vary in each country. These are dependent on several factors: the specific country’s ideology, its economic development, its proximity to an “Eastern” or “Western” model, its ability to learn from foreign education systems and its attempts at self-identification in the global educational space.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Diah Ratri Oktavriana ◽  
Nasiri Nasiri

This research is a normative research. One of the fulfillment of human rights is justice in equalizing the position of every citizen before the law, as stated in Article 27 paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. The right to equality before the law or what is commonly referred to as equality before the law is a principle that provides recognition and protection of human rights for every individual regardless of one's background. Therefore, it is true that Law Number 16 of 2011 concerning Legal Aid for People Who Are Less Capable to Guarantee Constitutional Rights of Citizens for Justice and Equality before the Law emerged. Legal aid is a legal service provided by advocates to the community seeking justice In the realm of criminal cases, the provision of legal assistance is described in Article 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code which explains that in the interests of defense, a suspect or defendant has the right to receive legal assistance from one or more legal advisers during the time and at each level of examination. The provision of legal assistance must be based on the principle of equality before the law as stated in the explanation of Law Number 8 of 1981 concerning Criminal Procedure Law. From the various analyzes that have been carried out, in the perspective of Islamic criminal law it can be concluded that the principle of equality before the law as described in Article 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code is equivalent to an order to provide legal aid which in Islamic criminal law is spelled out in Surah Al-Maidah verse 2 which states that as a fellow humans are ordered to help each other as a form of horizontal worship to fellow humans (habl minan-nas). In addition there are many more both in the Al Qur'an and the hadith of the prophet regarding the application of the principle of equality before the law.


Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-139
Author(s):  
Jo-Ann Wallace

The gap in pro bono legal services provided by corporate legal departments and large private law firms is not surprising: The formalization of pro bono work by large firms has been underway on a significant scale for far longer than it has within corporations. This process has made large firm pro bono efforts more efficient and effective through improved practices. It has also led firm leaders and lawyers generally to expect more volunteerism of this sort. Companies that apply their resources, business experience, or other assets have successfully expanded the impact of their pro bono hours. Because of the scale of this need, and because legal-services lawyers have specialized expertise that corporate lawyers can't easily replicate, corporate pro bono efforts will not, on their own, close the justice gap. But these efforts have the potential to contribute significantly more to the ability of legal-aid organizations to serve their clients, and to help close this gap.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. C. Nirmal

This article makes some observations about legal education in India by locating it within a wider context of legal education reform that is taking place in Law Schools across the world in the wake of globalizationled and globalization-induced changes in the nature and needs of legal profession. For being both intellectually challenging and professionally relevant, legal education should be more responsible than ever before to the legal needs of the community national as well as international , and the learning needs of students to become professionally competent to play their role in an increasingly transnationalized legal service market. Any effort to restructure and reorient legal education to attain these goals will be an uphill task for any school. This article begins with exploring the implications of globalization for legal education and then turns to nature, aims and objectives of legal education. The article then looks at the possible changes required to be made in the existing curriculum for undergraduate law students in order to make the legal education more relevant and meaningful for its consumers. The focus then shifts to issues concerning methods of teaching, clinical experience and assessment of students. This article then considers issues arising from the proposal of the Bar Council of India to reduce the period of Masters programme and then builds a strong case for strengthening a research tradition in Law Schools. The focus then shifts to measures that are necessary to attract and retain better faculty and also to the regulatory role of the Bar Council of India in the field of legal education. The article concludes with some reflections on the promise of a different vision of legal education.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 373
Author(s):  
Barbara Preložnjak

<p>Although clinical legal education has a long tradition in common law countries, the countries of the continental European legal system, to which the Republic of Croatia (hereinafter Croatia) belongs, have recognized its importance in the last few years. The first established legal clinic in Croatia was the one of the Faculty of Law at the University of Rijeka. It has been implemented as part of the curriculum for the academic year 1996/1997 and offered to the fourth year students as an elective course entitled “Clinic for Civil Law”. Within the Rijeka Clinic, law students were able to acquire theoretical and practical knowledge, by resolving hypothetical cases, under the supervision and with the support of teachers, lawyers, judges, notaries public and state attorneys. In 2002, with the support of the Institute Open Society from Budapest, the Faculty of Law at the University of Osijek established a legal clinic in the form of practical training for students of the third and fourth year of legal studies. By participating in the clinic’s activity, students of Osijek Law Faculty helped provide legal aid to citizens of lower economic status. This included help in providing general legal information and legal advice, as well as help in covering procedural cost from the funds donated to the Clinic. The lack of financial means that were needed for daily expenditures meant that the Legal Clinic in Osijek was temporarily closed. Nowadays, faculty members of Osijek Law Faculty are trying to solve financial problems and to continue previous good practice in providing legal aid to the poor citizens.</p>


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