Week Ten - The Final Chapter
Greetings for the final time from Prague. I know it is cliche to say, but it really is hard to believe that my stay in this beautiful city is close to an end. I have done some reflecting this week, as I have started to purge and pack and rearrange files to fit in my beleaguered backpack. This experience has been a wonderful gift. It has been an opportunity to develop my skills in legal research, as well as gain exposure to the international law and human rights fields. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to sit at the table with lawyers from around the world, including Russia, Turkey, Israel, Poland, the UK, and the US. They have taught me so much--not only about the law, but also about how to persevere in the face of great challenges.
I have reflected on the benefits of a global perspective--or even what our William & Mary professors might call comparative law--in many of my blog posts. While I came to Prague with the conviction that looking outside our own national context is important and good and helpful, I have seen, repeatedly, the reality of those benefits, as they play out in conversations and networks, this summer. It seems that part of the particular challenges that come with the erosion of rule of law and democracy is that it isolates people. In countries where there is a slide toward totalitarianism, torture practices, and restrictions on human rights, the citizens become more and more unable to access networks and connection to those beyond their own systems and structures. Those who resist and challenge these forces are deliberately removed from society, subject to random arrests and detention, even total disappearance. And freedom of the press, in these contexts, is systematically stifled or dismantled, so that access to information about one's own country, as well as the world, is distorted at best. So the ability to gain a global perspective, to understand and contextualize one's own national or regional challenges in the context of broader trends and patterns seems more and more of a luxury to me, but one that is vital to creating resilience, opportunities for growth in a society, and new pathways for social justice. The ability to connect with others, to know we're not alone, and see other places that face similar--but not the same--challenges is a vital check on the tendency of totalitarianism to try and convince us to trust in our own existing power structures. I suppose what I am trying to say is that solidarity across borders is important, and it allows us to reflect our own government's systems to ask whether, where, and how justice can be served better.
For example, as I mentioned in last week's post, the Turkish lawyers who participated in CEELI's training programs continually raised questions about what they should do when a judge refuses to listen to their arguments, allows a prosecutor to dictate their verdict, or simply violates the procedural rules. The benefit of having instructors from Turkey, as well as Russia and the U.S., was so that the participants could hear from seasoned lawyers who have faced those exact challenges in Turkey, but also from seasoned lawyers who have not ever worked in Turkey but who have navigated different systems and challenges and are able to lend an entirely different framework, or way of thinking about the problem. At the end of the day, perhaps much of the work these human rights lawyers do is the day to day work of holding the judiciary accountable on the small things, but these small things add up. And the benefit of hearing from those outside their own national contexts was apparent when by the end of the week they were saying they had thought of new strategies and arguments to present before the court, based on the instructors willingness to analogize from one national context to another. Plus, it's encouraging, I think, for people who face back-breaking work of resisting human rights violations under regimes that continually violate human rights to hear from others that their work is, indeed, hard, but that they are doing a good job, that they are providing hope to others working in other places, that they are creating models for what this work can look like around the world.
I am finished preaching for now. But the bottom line is that I have lots to think about and take back with me to my classes this next semester. This week, I have enjoyed celebrating my time here with my CEELI colleagues, who have been very generous and kind. It has been nice to reflect with them, even as they continually evaluate the future of the organization and how CEELI best responds to the current moment. I have also learned, during my time here, that while we often think of the law as more fixed and stable in its norms, those norms can shift rapidly, and maintaining judicial institutions is an ongoing, evolving, dynamic process. Being on the ground with those who are always adapting and changing to enhance this process is quite exciting--and quite an honor.
I'll close with a word about the image I included at the top of this post. It's a terrible picture, at first glance. I took it one day to capture a view across a few of the bridges in Prague, but it turned out a bit ugly, with the street level of the bridge on which I stood covering the bottom half of the picture. But you can still see the river and the bridges beyond and a glimpse of the incredible Prague views. While this is certainly not the best picture of Prague you can find (you can Google much more stunning images), it has become a bit of a metaphor for me, visually. One of the challenges of summer internships, of being in school, of embarking on a new career venture is that I constantly feel in the middle of things, without absolute assurance that I will make it to the other side, or at least to an other side that I have built up in my mind. But there is something about the metaphor of a bridge that is helpful. Bridges allow crossing over and transition in a way that is safe and secure, full of stability. Walking across a bridge is literally a means of going from one place to another, but it is still its own place, and when you look up to catch the view from the bridge, they can be beautiful and even inspiring. I find myself surrendering to the moment when I cross the bridges in Prague, letting go of some small piece of worry that weighs on my shoulders. I hope to carry this attitude into the rest of my law school experience, to allow it to be a stable bridge filled with good views everywhere I turn.