Resposted from www.justicecompassadvisers.com/blog/
Andrew Solomon
A Year Ago
On July 1, 2025, USAID ceased operating as the United States’ lead development agency. One year later, the consequences are still being felt for many around the world. The global rule of law community is, necessarily, moving on. New funding realities, new institutional arrangements, and new delivery models are taking shape. However, moving on should not mean leaving behind the knowledge, tools, and practice that USAID helped build.
Let’s take for instance the USAID Rule of Law Policy: A Renewed Commitment to Justice, Rights, and Security for All. Its adoption in April 2023 was a significant moment for USAID, for the United States Government, and for the broader global rule of law community. That moment deserves to be recalled. Certainly not for nostalgia. The more important reason is that the policy captured a body of knowledge, tools, and practice that can continue to inform and shape how rule of law assistance is designed, delivered, and financed moving forward.
The policy remains relevant and useful because it reflects what many policymakers and practitioners have learned over decades. Rule of law assistance, like domestic reform, must evolve. Both must be more grounded in data and evidence, more targeted and adaptive, more locally-led, more cost-effective, and more open and people-centered. In other words, policy and practice must be smarter.
A First of Its Kind Rule of Law Policy
The 2023 policy was USAID’s first-ever rule of law policy. That fact alone is significant. USAID supported rule of law programming for roughly three decades across many regions, legal systems, and political contexts. Its programs strengthened judiciaries, ministries of justice, prosecutors and police, legal aid providers, bar associations, law schools, anti-corruption bodies, and civil society. Yet until 2023, USAID lacked a comprehensive policy to define, guide, and ultimately provide greater coherence to that work.
It was also the first and only U.S. Government policy on rule of law assistance. Other U.S. Government actors, i.e. the State Department, Department of Justice, and Department of Commerce, had their programs. But none had or has to this day a comparable policy.
That made the USAID rule of law policy more than an internal guidance document. It was an expression of the agency’s long-standing leadership in this space. It was also a statement that rule of law belongs at the center of sustainable development goals.
From Institutions to People and Systems, Services, and Society
For much of its history, rule of law assistance at USAID and elsewhere was institution-centered. That work was necessary. In many countries, courts needed better administration of justice. Judiciaries needed safeguards for independence. Prosecutors needed specialized expertise. Ministries needed better policies. Professional associations needed better integrity standards for their members. Law schools needed improved curricula and clinical education. Institution strengthening mattered and still does.The USAID policy did not reject institutions. It did something more important. The policy provided a rationale and means to reorient them through people-centered justice.
Notably, the policy was the first by a leading donor to embrace people-centered justice as a paradigm shift in rule of law programming. In addition to changing how USAID and its implementing partners worked, it also asked justice institutions, and those working in them, to move beyond their parochial needs and pay greater attention to the people and communities they are mandated to serve.
That shift matters too. People do not experience rule of law and justice as a strategy, a statute, or a case number. They experience it when they try to resolve a family dispute, access benefits, enforce a contract, obtain identity documents, report violence, challenge corruption, or defend their rights. People-centered justice begins by seeing those problems not as peripheral, but as the place where rule of law and justice become real. The policy also gave USAID and its partners a simple but effective frame for diagnosing problems and designing responses: systems, services, and society.
In a nutshell, justice systems must be coherent and capable as well as accountable, independent and efficient. Justice services must be accessible and responsive. And society must be empowered to know, use, and shape the law. People and their needs and experiences are the through-line. That was the real innovation. People-centered justice was not treated as a separate program category. It was treated as an approach for making rule of law assistance smarter.
Data, Evidence, Learning, and Innovation
The policy also reflected a more disciplined approach to knowledge. It was informed by a deep dive into USAID’s rule of law programming, a review of achievements and technical approaches, a rule of law evidence gap map, and a terrain analysis. In other words, it began with data, evidence, and learning.
That effort led to a clear conclusion. Rule of law assistance should no longer rely on inputs and outputs alone. Counting the number of laws drafted, judges trained, lawyer workshops held, convictions achieved, or case management information systems installed is not enough. The harder question is whether people’s legal problems are being solved, services are improving, rights are being protected, institutions are becoming more trusted, and people are experiencing justice differently.
The policy elevated data and evidence for precisely this reason. People-centered justice requires understanding what justice problems people face in their everyday lives, where they seek help, what barriers they encounter along the way, what outcomes they receive, and how they experience justice systems and services.
It also created space for innovation. Not innovation theater. Not more technology and automation for its own sake. But, real and value-added innovation (tech and non-tech alike) inclusive of journey mapping, legal needs surveys, feedback loops, plain language, procedural justice, and open justice as well as digital tools where they are appropriate. The point is not to enhance and digitize old dysfunction. The point is to make justice more user-friendly and problem-solving from the justice seeker’s perspective.
What Donors and Practitioners Can Still Use
For donors and practitioners still committed to this work, the policy remains a source of practical guidance. Start with people’s justice problems. Understand the system and the political economy around it. Look beyond formal institutions to the full range of justice services, and informal pathways. Build partnerships among courts, governments, civil society, legal aid providers, academia, media, and the private sector. Use data. Test assumptions. Measure outcomes and adapt accordingly.
Just as important, rule of law programming must find ways to overcome the barriers that separate justice from other development challenges. Justice problems often arise in health, education, housing, employment, land, family life, migration, public services, security, and economic activity. Rule of law programming should therefore be more integrated, not more standalone and apart.
This is where the policy remains especially useful. It does not offer a rigid model. It offers a way of thinking and collaborating to close justice and trust gaps.
Carrying Smart Policy and Practice Forward
What Comes Next
USAID’s Rule of Law Policy should not be treated as a relic of a disrupted agency and development cooperation model. It should be treated as part of the shared knowledge base of the field as it seeks to meet the moment and build a new model.
It captured a moment when rule of law practitioners were beginning to do the work better by doing it differently. It placed people and their priorities at the center without abandoning justice institutions. It emphasized data, evidence, learning, innovation, local solutions, and justice-seeker outcomes. It also recognized that rule of law assistance is still a work in progress, but not a field without knowledge.
That is worth recalling. And more than recalling, it is worth carrying forward.
The future rule of law assistance model must be smarter. Targeted support, pooled expertise, and catalytic financing have real potential, especially when paired with better data, clearer outcomes, and stronger local ownership. New tools developed under the auspices of the Justice Action Coalition are helping move the field in this direction. For instance, the OECD people-centered justice measurement framework can help systems assess whether justice is actually becoming more responsive to people’s needs. The Justice Financing Framework also can help donors and reformers think more creatively about how justice is funded–including how to deliver more justice for the money.
The task now is to connect better policy, data and measurement, and financing with results-oriented activities. At Justice Compass Advisers, we are working to do just that: assisting justice leaders and others design, deliver, and finance smarter rule of law and justice policies and practices.