ABSTRACT
Legal empowerment has for some time been seen as essential in addressing and improving living conditions of socially marginalized and economically deprived peoples and communities. In its final report, Making the Law Work for Everyone, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP, 2008: 1) 1 argues ‘four billion people around the world are robbed of the chances to better their lives and climb out of poverty, because they are excluded from the rule of law’. The legal empowerment discourse assumes that if people have access to justice and formalized rights to their property and resources, they are in a better position to plan their lives and make strategic choices that can move them out of poverty by self-provision. While there may be some empirical support for this proposition, legal empowerment should not be reduced to a narrow concept of access to justice institutions and the rule of law. Legal empowerment should be analysed in context of a broader notion of empowerment grounded in human rights principles, social ethics and communal action. In other words, legal empowerment is not just about access to legal institutions; it should be addressed in a broader framework using the reforming potential of human rights as both moral and legal norms. While the legal dimension points towards the justiciability of human rights, the moral dimension emphasizes the social ethics of human rights as embedded in social relations and collective action.
