Evaluating Legal Empowerment:Problems of Analysis and Measurement

Introduction The term ‘empowerment’ has been used to describe a whole gamut of experiences – ranging from increased literacy and income to self-reliance, participation and decision-making; however, ‘legal empowerment’ is distinct from other forms of empowerment in that the process involves the explicit or implicit use of the law in improving poor people’s access to legal redress. Legal empowerment strategies strive to help the poor achieve incremental changes in their lives by bringing reforms at the state, community and household/individual levels. The principal goal is to ensure access to justice by the poor and the marginalized through enhanced legal knowledge and related skills to acclaim entitlements in meaningful ways. The strategies generally utilized for legal empowerment are legal literacy, alternative dispute resolution, legal aid and public interest litigation. The paper reflects on questions as to whether legal empowerment projects have been able to strike a balance between competing aspects of rights and social justice and change prevalent structural inequalities and power relations that essentially perpetuate disempowerment of the poor and disadvantaged groups in the first place. In other words, do the strategies simply provide ‘quick-fix’ solutions and promote a politically disengaged model of empowerment or do they assist beneficiaries in developing an intrinsic understanding of the issues at hand and the capacity to deal with them in effective ways? Additionally, the paper addresses the problem of impact assessment and sustainability of legal empowerment strategies.