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I.
OVERVIEW
From time to time The Spangenberg Group (TSG) responds to
queries from individuals interested in reforming civil and criminal justice
systems around the world. Our international program experience includes:
· Serving as consultants to governments and/or legal aid
organizations in developing and developed counties;
· Training public defenders in Chile
on the newly introduced adversarial system;
· Training lawyers and women's rights advocates in the People's
Republic of China (PRC);
· Developing and teaching a seminal course on gender and the law
in the PRC;
Expanding Access to Justice in Eastern Europe and England and Wales
The Spangenberg Group has been a participant of the
project on Promoting Access to Justice in Central and Eastern Europe since 1998.
The project is funded by the Eastern European Union, European Initiative
for Democracy and Human Rights and Constitutional and Legal Policy
Institute (COLPI, Budapest). The project is the collaborative effort of Helsinki
Foundation for Human Rights (Warsaw), Interrights (London), Public
Interest Law Initiative (Budapest- New York) and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (Sofia).
In 1998, TSG was consulted by the Lord Chancellors Department, London and Mr. Spangenberg's advice was sought on the future of legal
aid in England and Wales.
Assessing the Cambodian Defenders Project
In 1998/1999, working with the Human Rights Law Group, TSG
evaluated the Cambodian Defenders Project (CDP), the first and largest
legal service organization in Cambodia, staffed by Cambodian lay people trained as legal rights
defenders. The CDP provides free legal representation to the poor and
victims of human rights.
Training Public Defenders in Chile
In August 2002, TSG collaborated with ACCESSO a program on
oral trial advocacy and alternative dispute resolution based at the Law
School of the Catholic University of Temuco,
Chile to conduct the first ever train the train program in trial advocacy
in Chile. Given the historic importance of the new legal reform movement in
Chile, TSG was specially privileged to lead a seminal program that would
train counsel in advocacy skills in the newly introduced oral advocacy
system.
As part of the movement to consolidate democratic
governance in Chile, on December 16, 2000, Chile
officially began its pilot program on the reform of the justice sector.
Shortly afterwards, two regions (Fourth Region of La Serena and Ninth
Region of Temuco) formally adopted an adversarial
trial process in criminal matters and an oral trial system. On October 16, 2001, three new regions (Second Region of Antofagasta
and Third Region of Copiapo) were added to the
reform process. Currently, the adversarial system has been successfully
introduced into five regions of the country and it is shortly expected that
it will be extended to the other eight regions of the country.
The public defender system created by Law no. 19.718
functions under the Ministry of Justice of Chile
and is state financed. The objective of this new program is to provide
criminal defense to all accused of a crime, felony or misdemeanor in the
new oral tribunals who do not want to hire private counsel. The right to a
public defender is afforded to all those criminally accused and is not
means based. If a defendant has the ability to pay a fee, a fee will be
charged.
The Reglamento that is soon to
come to force will provide for an institutional public defender only for
the first appearance in court otherwise known as control de detencion or formalizacion.
After the first appearance the defendant is free to choose an attorney from
among private contract attorneys chosen through a competitive bidding
process to provide representation.
The participants were drawn from all across Chile
and included judges, prosecutors, public defenders, private attorneys and
government lawyers. The topics covered at the program included case
preparation, how to develop a theory of the case, interviewing clients,
direct and cross examination and opening and closing arguments. All
sessions were participatory and interactive. A distinct feature of the
program was a discussion of the ethical obligations of lawyers. A parallel
session on teaching methodology was conducted for potential trainers on
trial advocacy.
Advancing the Enforcement of Women's Rights in China
Since 1996 TSG, with support from the Ford Foundation, has
been in the forefront of sustained efforts to strengthen access to justice
for women in China. The Spangenberg Group has the unique distinction of working
closely with different group providing access to justice and strengthening
women's rights in China. A hallmark of our program is the close collaboration with
local organizations and the contextual use of local laws and regulations
and analogous comparative law in women's rights advocacy.
The chief objective of our training programs is to develop
the legal skills of the PRC's legal aid lawyers
and legal workers so that they can provide more competent services to women
and the under-privileged. Our training programs and courses endeavor to
enhance the capacity of Chinese lawyers and advocates to create novel
advocacy strategies and expand the boundaries of traditional feminist
advocacy to meet the ever expanding volume of cases dealing with women's
rights violations.
The primary goal of the training program is to enforce
women's rights through the teaching of lawyering
skills and the application of relevant Chinese laws, which guarantee
women's rights and privileges. This is extremely important in the context
of China's weak legal system where laws are not always enforced and
legal processes are not always strictly followed. By showing through cases
and experiences how women's rights advocates in the United States and
across the world are using the legal process to challenge the denial of
equal opportunities for women the seminars hope to strengthen the
enforcement mechanisms available to women in China. The training seminars
hope to sustain women's legal aid centers and women's advocacy
organizations as powerful forums for the protection of women's rights,
economic empowerment and women's self-determination in China; strengthen
the organizational ability of regional groups and networks to provide
effective training, guidance and orientation to local groups throughout the
region on women's rights advocacy; build coalitions across related issues
with other women's rights organizations so as to give voice to women's
needs and strengthen the women's rights movement in China and create a
platform of action to undertake concrete action steps for the realization
of women's rights in China.
In June 2000 and January 2003, TSG won major funding for
the development of several cutting-edge and innovative women's rights
projects in China. The Ford Foundation continues to fully support TSG work.
Strengthening Legal Aid and Women's Rights Advocacy
in the People's Republic of China
China Legal Aid Center
Since 1996, TSG has worked closely with the China Legal
Aid Centre of the Ministry of Justice. Robert L. Spangenberg has spoken at
several seminars organized by the China Legal Aid Centre and there exists
an ongoing exchange of information and strengthening of ties between TSG
and the China Legal Aid Center. The Spangenberg Group is collaborating with
the legal aid centre to develop a training program in order to mainstream
women's rights lawyering at the government level.
All China Women's Federation (ACWF)
The All China Women's Federation established in March 1949
is the largest non-governmental women's organization in China.
Its aim is to act as the bridge between the Chinese Communist Party, the
People's Government and women in China.
ACWF has an extensive network all across the country. The ACWF has tried to
address the rapidly growing demand for lawyers by providing legal advise for women through its rights-protection
departments.
Training Program on Lawyering
Skills and Women's Rights Advocacy with the Hubei
Province Women's Federation and the Wuhan
University Centre for the Disadvantaged
In December 2000, TSG, with support from the Ford
Foundation, collaborated with the Hubei Province
Women's Federation and the Wuhan University
Centre for the Disadvantaged. The aim of the program was to support the
development of a more skilled and larger community of legal services
providers able to put into effect women's rights in China.
Participants from all across China
including several provincial level women's federation offices, law school
clinical programs and independent non-governmental organizations
participated in the seminar. The project took the lead in training a group
of Chinese legal services providers on lawyering
and advocacy skills, to put rights and laws into action on behalf of women.
One of the primary objectives of the project was to build networking
capabilities among the Chinese legal services organizations to build
coalitions among related issues. The seminar featured ten sessions ranging
from story telling discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of legal
advocacy for women to skills training and role playing for legal services
providers. Each session was designed to stimulate audience participation
and to advance a participatory, interactive style of pedagogy. The
discussion also promoted an exchange of ideas between the Chinese advocates
and their American counterparts on lawyering
skills and women's rights lawmaking.
Training Program on Lawyering
Skills and Women's Rights Advocacy with Hebei Province Women's Federation
In October 2001, TSG, once again under the auspices of the
Ford Foundation coordinated a program on building legal skills with the Hebei Province Women's Federation. The over 100
trainees were from the county level, town level and provincial level rights
protection divisions of the Hebei Women's
Federation. The tremendous shortage of legal aid lawyers in China
has made legal aid centres largely dependent on
legal aid workers. Training these advocates was key
to address the expanding demand for legal services for women.
In October 2002, TSG was once again invited to conduct a
training program on women's rights advocacy, this time around for the
private lawyers who volunteer their services to the Hebei
Province Women's Federation. The aim of the program was to help develop
creative strategies to respond to evolving areas of women's rights and
legal practice. This program involved cutting-edge skills training in areas
that are still emerging in women's rights and legal practice in China.
These training programs are considered groundbreaking in
its hands-on approach to teaching layering skills and its contextual use of
Chinese law and case studies in case analysis. The interactive training
methodology adopted by TSG is a pioneering effort to introduce trainee
participation, case analysis, role playing and story telling as effective
learning tools. Turning away from the conventional lecture format, this
innovative teaching methodology has met with huge success in the PRC.
Our local partners have informed us that since our
training programs the local groups are able to operationalize
rights protection in a far more effective manner on behalf of women.
Training Program on Lawyering
Skills and Women's Rights Advocacy with the Shaanxi Research Association for Women and Family (SRAWF)
The Spangenberg Group has developed a legal skills and
women's rights advocacy program for the SRAWF. The SRAWF is unique in China
in that it is one of the very few non-governmental organizations in China.
SRAWF has engaged in creative advocacy strategies and assisted in the
passing on local domestic violence legislation. The Spangenberg Group
training programs scheduled to take place in July 2003 aims to train
lawyers and law professors who volunteer their services to the SRAWF.
Despite a very strong advocacy program on behalf of
battered women, The Shaanxi Association does not
have a legal aid program to give concrete expression to women's rights
enforcement. Building on the success of their advocacy work, The Shaanxi Association has asked TSG to develop a training
program which focuses on training lawyers, legal workers and advocates on
how to enforce rights more effectively on behalf of women. Legal aid
lawyers and legal workers in China
are not still fully aware of the law's potential to create institutional
and systemic change. Hitherto, the practice has been for legal workers and
even lawyers to use extra legal means or administrative and political
processes to challenge the women's rights violations.
Developing and Teaching a Course on Gender and the Law
in China
Based on TSG's unique knowledge
of the status of women in China and international and comparative women's
rights law, the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(CASS) has invited us to develop a seminal course on Gender and the Law to
be offered for the first time to leading scholars and advocates who form
the vanguard of the women's movement in China. It is hoped that this course
which is being funded and spearheaded by the Ford Foundation will be
offered annually by CASS will encourage the analysis of the impact of
Chinese laws and policies on women, the causes and impact of gender
discrimination both in the private and public sphere and provide the
theoretical framework to understand feminist lawyering
in China and around the world. The course will be taught by pre-eminent
scholars from the United
States and
international arena. These scholars include, Professor Henry Steiner, Jermia Smith Professor of Law and Director, Human
Rights Program at HarvardLaw School; Professor
Elizabeth Schneider, Rose L. Hoffer Professor at
Law at Brooklyn University and leading expert on gender discrimination in
the United States; Hon. Nancy Gertner, Federal
District Court Judge; Radhika Coomaraswamy,
United Nations Special Rapoprteur on Violence
Against Women and Asthma Jahangir, United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial an Summary
or Arbitrary Executions and winner of the United Nations Millenium Peace Prize. The in-depth and comprehensive
course materials produced by TSG draw equally from Chinese, American and
international sources and incorporates Chinese feminist theory, feminist
theory from the United
States and the
global women's rights agenda.
Next Steps in the People's Republic of China 2003
A Study Assessing the Impact of The Spangenberg Group
Programs on the Delivery of Legal Services for Women in China
With the completion of the training seminars, Professor
Margaret Woo, Professor of Law at North Eastern University and renowned
Chinese women's rights scholar will critically assess the relevancy of the
programs and measure the degree to which the training programs have
impacted women in the community. This sample study will provide special
benefits to all group providing legal services for women as it will analyze
information on the needs of women and the legal mechanisms best suited to
respond to them. The study will also facilitate or improve the coordination
of services among groups working on women's legal issues; collect data on
activities to monitor and analyze the experience gained; and make proposals
that could contribute to law reform in the areas of legal aid and women's
rights.
Creating Women's Rights Task Forces and a Platform of
Action
As part of our next phase of programs TSG aims to develop
task forces on certain pressing issues concerning women in China
and through these task forces build an active network of women's rights
groups in China. These task forces will for the first time give advocates in
different organizations engaged in advancing equal justice for women a
chance to come together on issues of common interest. The task force
members will be lawyers, community activists,
educators and advocates engaged in the area of women's rights and will be
drawn from the NGO sector and the All China Women's Federation (ACWF). Task
forces will be created in three areas of the law (domestic violence,
women's labor rights and women's property rights). All three task forces
will come together at the Women's Action Forum, a train the trainer forum
at which task force or focus group members will discuss how to develop a
women's rights network of NGO and women's federation advocates; how to
address concerns and recommendations raised by the task forces at task
force meetings; and develop action steps to address problematic areas
concerning gaps in the law and the obstacles faced in implementing these
laws.
II. TSG INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS: STAFF AND
CONSULTANTS
Robert Spangenberg: Robert L. Spangenberg,
President of The Spangenberg Group has devoted nearly 40 years of his
professional life to the study and improvement of delivery of legal
services to the poor in the United States. Mr. Spangenberg is known as the
preeminent expert in the field of indigent defense in the United States. Mr. Spangenberg began his career as a trial lawyer in the
state and federal court before becoming Assistant Dean at Boston University Law School
where he taught and developed a series of new clinical law programs as the
Director of the School's Legal Studies Institute. Later he began the Boston
Legal Assistance Project, a neighborhood civil legal services program which
is now known as the Greater Boston Legal Services.
In 1995, Mr. Spangenberg founded The Spangenberg Group
which represented a pioneering effort to build an organization that would
fill a void in the field of indigent defense and civil legal services. In
the last five years under Mr. Spangenberg's
leadership TSG has begun expanding its reach globally.
View biography of Robert L.
Spangenberg
Rangita de Silva de Alwis: Rangita de Silva de Alwis is
Director, International Programs at The Spangenberg Group. She received her
law degree with honors from the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo Sri Lanka, where she taught international law and legal theory upon
graduation. As a Program Officer of the Law and Society Trust she worked
closely with Radhika Coomaraswamy,
now United Nations Special Rapporteur, Violence
Against Women and coordinated national and South Asian symposia on women's
issues. She received her LL.M (1994) and S.J.D. 1997 from Harvard Law School.
Before joining TSG she worked as Senior Fellow of the European Law Research
Institute at Harvard Law School and taught constitutional law as a Visiting Professor at Stonehill College in Boston. She is currently a consultant to the United Nations,
Disability Rights Division, Social and Economics Rights Program. She is the
co-author of When Gender Differences Become a Trap: The Impact of China's
Labor Law on Women, 14 Yale J.L.and Feminism 69. VIEW Recently, she testified before
Congressional-Executive Committee Roundtable on China
on women's rights enforcement in China.
View testimony.
Michael Schneider: Michael Schneider became Of
Counsel to TSG in the Fall of 1997. He received his BA from Brown University,
J.D. from Columbia Law School and a graduate degree in International Criminal and Human
Rights Law from Fletcher School and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
He practiced for four years as Associate to Harvard Law School Law
Professor and famed criminal lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
He also served ten years as a trial, appellate and training attorney for
public defender offices in Massachusetts and New York.
Michelle McKinnon: Michele McKinnon is the Program
Assistant, International Projects at The Spangenberg Group. She graduated
with honors from University of California, San Diego where she studied economics and mathematics.
Professor Charles Ogletree:
Professor Ogletree is Jesse Climenko
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Vice-Dean of Clinical Programs at Harvard Law School.
Over the course of his illustrious career he has held a number of positions
including Deputy Director of the District of Columbia's Public Defender Service. Professor Ogletree
collaborates closely with all of TSG's initiatives
in China.
Professor Richard Wilson: Professor Wilson is
Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University
and the Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic of American
University. He is known as one of the foremost authorities on Latin America in the United States.
Professor Elizabeth Schneider: Professor Schneider
is Rose L. Hoffer Professor of Law Brooklyn
University School of Law and leading expert on gender discrimination in the
United States. Professor Schneider has also taught gender discrimination at Harvard Law School and
Columbia University School of Law.
Hon. Nancy Gertner: Judge
Nancy Gertner is United States Federal District
Judge and Visiting Professor of Law Yale Law School. Before being appointed
as a federal judge, in an illustrious career as a private practitioner and
partner of several Boston-based law firms, Nancy Gertner
argued several ground breaking cases on reproductive rights, sexual
harassment and gender-based employment discrimination.
Phyllis Chang: Phyllis Chang is Consultant to TSG
and Executive Director of China Law and Development, Ltd. Before forming
her own company, Ms. Chang was Program Officer, Democracy and Rights at
Ford Foundation, Beijing.
Stephen F. Hanlon: Stephen Hanlon has a long
history of handling public interest and civil rightys
cases. He manages Holland and Knight's Community Services Team, which provides legal
representation to people, groups and causes that otherwise
could not afford it. The Wall Street Journal has described the work of the
Community Services Team as the "region's most extensive program for
handling public interest cases."
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