Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights

The Legal Empowerment Network and the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative are excited to announce the launch of Voting Rights & Civic Power: Navigating the System After a Felony Conviction. The module offers a look at “What’s on the Ballot?” to illustrate how local officials and ballot measures directly shape life both inside and outside of carceral facilities. It then outlines a comprehensive state-by-state breakdown of the laws governing the impact of felony convictions and incarceration on voting, the varying paths to restore your right to vote. We invite you to use this resource and share it with your community. 

Are you a lawyer or legal practitioner interested in supporting social movements and building workers’ collective power? If so, consider applying to a new virtual program for lawyers piloted by WIEGO in partnership with the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and the Movement Law Lab. Together we'll be offering a nine-month program from January to September 2027, convening 20 to 30 lawyers from different regions and legal traditions. Learn more about the program. 

Apply by October 31, 2026.

“I felt safe. I felt seen. I felt inspired.”

In February, the US Legal Empowerment Network gathered in Chicago for our first National Convening, marking a transition from an emerging network into a powerful national infrastructure for justice. 

In a climate of rising authoritarianism, reclaiming the law is a form of resistance and a radical act of participation. By fostering cross-movement solidarity and building a permanent infrastructure for justice, the US Legal Empowerment Network is proving that democracy is most powerful when it is built, defended, and reimagined from the ground up. 

Hear from some of our members in this video. 

This past month, our global cohort of members gathered in Zimbabwe to learn from each other and from the VaTombe People of Hanyanya. The Bernstein Institute, stewarded by the Lab’s co-facilitator Mela Chiponda, has been supporting indigenous women leaders in Hanyanya to defend their land, environmental, and cultural rights through legal empowerment and PAR. Read More. 

In 2018, the Bernstein Institute launched Justice Power, a documentation project that partners with directly affected community members, immigration advocates, and lawyers in the United States to highlight legal empowerment strategies that help immigrant communities to know, use, shape, and transform the laws that impact their lives. Our team has spent the past year building relationships with over a dozen new legal empowerment organizations, identifying new strategies, and co-developing how-to guides.

The Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI), founded by former jailhouse lawyer Jhody Polk, invests in jailhouse lawyers as a core strategy in ending the cycle of incarceration. The JLI fuses legal education, movement building, participatory research, and advocacy to bring visibility to jailhouse lawyers and ensure they have the resources to know, use, and shape law.

We are excited to share this video featuring one of our partners in the Lab - Tim Kakuru and Barefoot Law in Uganda. Barefoot Law transforms communities and helps build power among the most underserved people in Uganda by using legal empowerment as a tool to expand access to justice.