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.