Rule of Law Research Consortium

The core initiative of WJP's scholarship program is the Rule of Law Research Consortium (RLRC), a community of leading researchers in a variety of fields—including law, economics, political science, sociology, international relations, and anthropology. The Consortium is harnessing diverse approaches and methods to produce research on the rule of law and recommendations on how to strengthen it. It is intended to become a repository of the best research on governance and the rule of law for scholars and policymakers worldwide.

The WJP’s Research & Scholarship program is co-chaired by Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Robert L. Nelson (Northwestern University, American Bar Foundation), and Alejandro Ponce (World Justice Project). 

Read about our latest conferences here.

Conferences

December 2-4, 2022 | Dartmouth College
WJP and the Bright Line Watch research group collaborated wtih Dartmouth's Wright Center for the Study of Computation and Just Societies to convene scholars, legal experts and officials, students, journalists and leaders in civic organizations to consider threats to democracy and the rule of law in the United States. Read more about the conference.

Oct. 26-27, 2018 | Duke Law School
The 2018 WJP Scholars Conference was organized by the Rule of Law Research Consortium of the World Justice Project and hosted by Duke University. The event focused on the theme of "The Rule of Law: Subnational, Supranational, and Empirical." Explore the agenda.

May 6-7, 2016 | Stanford Law School
The themes of the 2016 conference were organized around four components: an examination of the origins of the rule of law; a look at the “rule of non-law” for development and security in poor countries today; a discussion of the issues of non-state armed actors, vigilantism, and violence; and finally, a discussion of measuring and analyzing the rule of law. Watch the presentations.

October 31-November 1, 2014 | University of Chicago Law School
The inaugural conference of the Rule of Law Research Consortium was organized around three main themes: conceptual issues around the concept of the rule of law; efforts to measure the rule of law—including the new World Justice Project Index—and empirical work that uses the measures; and practical issues related to rule of law implementation, including the relationship of theory to practice.​​​​​ Explore the panel discussions.

Rule of Law Research Consortium (RLRC) Members