...And Justice for All?

From Guatemala to Colombia, from South Africa to Russia, the Law School's Center for Criminal Justice has catapulted itself into new territory, with a mission to foster democracy and curb human rights abuses.

Internationalization has been the buzzword of late around the University, and Harvard Law School is no exception.

The University, which in recent years has looked outside the U.S.'s borders purchasing Ecuador's foreign debt and attracting more international students, is now busy at work developing a relatively new skill: working with foreign governments to overhaul their judicial systems.

Founded in 1969, the original mission of the Law School's Center for Criminal Justice was to examine legal issues on a domestic level. But in the past five years, the center, directed by Ames Professor of Law Philip B. Heymann, has catapulted itself into new territory, into countries where there is still considerable potential to foster democracy and curb human rights abuses.

In the past, the center has worked primarily with South and Central American countries, most notably undertaking a recently-finished, three-and-one-half year, $2 million project with Guatemala, says Daniel McGillis, deputy director of the center.

But the center has of late broadened its efforts even further, and is concurrently administering projects designed to reshape the legal systems of Russia, South Africa and Colombia.

Timely Efforts

The center's efforts are perhaps most timely in Russia, where the recent coup and collapse of communism has heightened the need for new criminal legislation, says Thayer Lecturer on Law Sarah Reynolds, who is directing the center's Russian activities.

Unlike the center's other work, that being done in Russia is not confined to the Center for Criminal Justice, but represents a multi-disciplinary approach. For example, the Center has enlisted the help of colleagues in economics and other areas of law.

Since last spring, Reynolds and her associates have been working with the Russian Federation's Ministry of Justice, establishing intensive working groups to examine different ways in which courts can be reformed and the power of the judiciary can be increased.

Reynolds says that although individual interests almost invariably enter the picture when legal or government institutions become involved in international advising, she feels the center has not succumbed to such pitfalls.

"One of the great advantages of having work of this kind done at a university level is that some of the conflicts of view usually encountered are less likely to be encountered from academics and experts examining it from the perspective of a problem," she says. "The University may be one of the few places that don't run into conflicts of interest."

Reynolds says the Russian criminal code, which was originally passed in 1960 and which has not been changed much since then, "contains significant restrictions on speech and expression, and it is terribly vague all the way through, so it is open to much abuse in its interpretation."

"We chose the criminal code because it stands in the way of a significant amount," she adds.

The program is also aiming to create a Russian Institute of Law, designed to "raise the qualifications of legal standards" and retrain Russian lawyers who were schooled in the old and quickly changing system, Reynolds says.

While naturally speeding up the reform process, the coup in Russia has in another way hindered the center's efforts a bit, by making fundraising for the project increasingly difficult.

"It felt to a lot of funders like they would be taking part in an internal conflict, supporting the Russian Federation against the Union Governments," she says.

Because of the "mind boggling" pace of legislative change in the government, Reynolds says, the program's work must be accomplished speedily, so the momentary dip in funding could be quite serious.

"There are 88 fundamental laws on the Russian agenda for the fall that could change life in the Soviet Union for some time to come," Reynolds says.

Despite the setbacks, though, officials at the Center believe the program in Russia can still be of great value.

"We will go on with it, fostering a long-term working relationship between experts and their Russian colleagues," Reynolds says.

"The schedule of events are such that an awful lot has to happen within the next two years," Heymann says. "It's a very exciting place to be, so it could go on much longer."

"It's a country that badly needs help," McGillis says. "It's also intellectually interesting. How do you build a new legal system on the ruins of a communist system?"

Program officials aren't exactly sure what the best way of finding such a solution. But at least one way they will not go about achieving such a task, Reynolds says, is by simply transposing American conceptions abroad.

Reynolds says that the first job of the working groups is to spend time immersing themselves in the study of Russian culture and society.

"You can't simply go from an American legal system to Russia unless you know the culture, economy and policy," she says.

Reynolds says that the Russian program will continue for at least two more years, at a cost of about $250,000 a year. Funding for the Russian project has come primarily from the Carnegie Foundation, as well as Rockefeller Family and Associates. Other work done by the center is likewise funded by non-Harvard sources, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Ford Foundation.

Shaping South Africa

Unlike the programs in Russia and Colombia, the center's involvement in South Africa was initiated solely by academics.

Heymann says the program has been spearheaded by himself and Anthony Mathews, a professor at South Africa's University of Natal who specializes in limitations on speech and state powers to arrest and hold.

The two have been working on a project, Heymann says, concerning how the police--which in the past have had a nototious record of brutality and secrecy--would have to change in a South Africa with a Black majority.

In early June, the center held in Petersburg a conference attended by the South African police and the African National Congress (ANC), as well as other conflicting political parties. British officials and New York City Police Commissioner Lee Brown also attended the conference, Heymann says.

At the conference, Heymann says, the ANC and other parties complained that the police often terrorize their members. Meanwhile, the police discussed the dangers involved in patrolling some of the cities, Heymann says.

"Police are frightened to go into cities, and they should be, because there is near warfare in many of the Black townships," Heymann says.

Another problem taken up at the conference was that of South Africa's prosecutors, which have in the past claimed a narrow sphere of responsibilities, Heymann says.

The prosecution felt "no need or right to challenge police on moral or legal grounds," Heymann says. "Their tradition had been to represent the police in court in criminal cases."

After the conference, representatives divided into smaller working groups, which are currently working on proposals regarding Black representation on the country's police force as well as checks on its power.

Representatives of the groups will discuss such proposals at a conference in Cambridge in the spring. The larger conference will then reconvene in South Africa next summer for final debate on issues of the police, the prosecuting process and the public defense system.

Empowering the Prosecution

Colombia has been beleaguered in the past with narcotics trafficking, right-wing vigilantism and left-wing terrorism, Heymann says, but the country is now looking to make changes in its criminal prosecution system.

Officials from the Colombian Ministry of Justice recently solicited the center's assistance in restructuring that nation's justice system. Heymann says that the center's international projects are usually initiated when a foreign government contacts the center.

Heymann says most Latin American countries are hampered by having few or no prosecutors, leaving a system in which police "often take matters into their own hands."

"If a criminal justice system cannot handle ordinary crime, there is very frequently a call to have generals handle it instead," Heymann says. "And police have a tendency to execute and punish on their own."

As a result, McGillis says, many crimes are either undetected or neglected. "A lot of these South American systems have only judges," he says. "This creates a situation where no one is really pursuing the cases."

Presently associates of the center are working in Colombia with a team of that country's academics, experts and government officials to develop blueprints for a new and improved prosecution system.

Because Colombia recently set up a new constitution which went into effect this past summer, McGillis says now is a prime time for developing reforms for the legal system in that country. McGillis says the joint team wants to have concrete recommendations about reshaping the criminal code by next month, when the Colombian Congress will next meet.

Student Involvement

Though the Center's work is undertaken primarily by Law School faculty members, some students have made contributions to the programs.

David B. Pointer, a second-year law student, has worked in Cambridge examining how Soviet laws contrast with those of England, Germany, France, Sweden and the United States. He lauds the accessibility of legal experts as one of the strengths of the center's programs.

"We had access to great experts on a moment's notice," Pointer says. "The context mobilized a lot of extremely good people. I don't think the government could get that access."

Pointer adds that the foreign delegates were much more open knowing that "they didn't have to worry about us having to further our own position."

Natasha Tsarkova '92 spent the summer translating legal documents as well as escorting Soviet visitors on rides with the Cambridge police.

The Soviet visitors, she says, "were very excited about the whole program."

A Lasting Impact?

McGillis says that the full effects of the program are not fully known, nor can they be easily assessed.

In South Africa, Heymann says, some effects have in fact already been seen. Immediately after the three-day conference, government officials announced that the officer ranks of the police force would have to have many more Blacks than before.

Some past projects have not had such a lasting impact, however, Heymann says.

In Guatemala, the target of the center's largest project to date, "some things stuck and some didn't," he says. The center's work was never really implemented, officials say, because of dramatic changes in the country's political climate.

And in 1986 and 1987, Heymann says, the center conducted a project involving Mexican-American drug trafficking, which turned out to be largely ineffectual. Heymann says the Mexican president moved in so quickly and firmly that the center's discussions had almost no effect.

"You hope that you'll have a permanent effect, McGillis says. "But you can't tell."