Initiative stocks African law libraries

Listen to this article

By Laura Brown 

BridgeTower Media Newswires

A Minnesota-based initiative has shipped 115 law and human rights libraries to 24 African countries since 2008, and new initiatives seek to strengthen the collaborative enterprise involving law firms, government officials and a leading legal publisher.

The Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative began as a result of the chance meeting of two neighbors, who just happened to be lawyers, at a neighborhood potluck back in 2008. Lane Ayres is a retired assistant Hennepin County attorney. Tom Pfeifer is an executive at Thomson Reuters.

Ayres had volunteered with Books for Africa, a large shipper of donated books, and had focused on sending law books. He asked Pfeifer if Thomson Reuters could assist, and the rest is history.

“To promote the rule of law in Africa is a heart-warming effort,” Ayres said. “It is not a political thing. Who can say no to sending books supporting the rule of law to legal organizations in Africa who have no books?”

The Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative was named for Mason, a federal magistrate judge and Books for Africa board member. The collaboration has grown over the years with the support of several Twin Cities law firms such as Robins Kaplan, Fredrikson & Byron, Ciresi Conlin and Dorsey & Whitney. Walter Mondale and Kofi Annan were honorary founding co-chairs. Funding comes from Twin Cities lawyers and judges, as well as individuals interested in this project from across the country.

Each reference law library consists of more than two hundred titles. Many have multiple volumes for teaching on subjects including business law, common law, human rights and international law, and legal process. While most of the books go to English-speaking countries in Africa, there are also legal titles in Portuguese and French. The main library comes from Thomson Reuters’ Eagan facility, although smaller collections from their divisions in Canada, Brazil  and Great Britain are also included.

Legal organizations, particularly from English-speaking countries, submit requests to the project. The project also seeks out legal organizations when it has a container heading to a particular country. U.S. business law is the world standard, and business subjects are especially sought. Legal process books such as trial advocacy, document drafting, legal ethics, are well-received no matter what a country’s legal system is.

Ayres says that most African court systems have few books in their library rooms and that what they do have tends to be older books. For instance, Ayres said he attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate Namibia’s library in the High Court in Oshakati. Although the new court building had a gorgeous library, the Thomson Reuters reference law library comprised all of its books.

Books were first shipped to Tanzania. In 2022, the Somaliland Bar Association received a shipment. Over the last couple of years, female lawyer organizations have been recipients. These organizations include the South African Women Lawyers Association, the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, and the International Federation of Women Lawyers (Ghana).

Pfeifer says that the project promotes the rule of law worldwide

“It helps provide the framework for a society to exist,” he said. “The rule of law helps ensure that a society is built upon rules of governance and a respect for due process, along with advancing and embracing human rights.

“The Initiative also seeks to broaden access to justice, illuminating what is possible when a strong legal foundation exists within a society’s construct and helping provide educational materials for those looking to evolve these initiatives, especially where we can help women in Africa further their legal aspirations.”

This year, the project is developing a partnership with the Attorney General Alliance, a bipartisan organization comprising attorneys general, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison serves on the project’s Advisory Board. They hope to send law libraries to three or four of the African legal organizations they work with yearly. They will be sending law libraries to Attorney General and Ministry of Justice Offices.

Another initiative has been to begin shipping reference law libraries to court systems these last couple of years, after focusing primarily on university law schools and bar associations.

The partnership has not been a one-way street. Traditional legal practices in Africa could have application in America.

Ayres said, “Having visited several African countries and their legal organizations, I’m impressed by the high number of disputes that are resolved, not by lawyers and formal systems, but informally by what we would call mediation. That is the traditional way and still continues today. African countries don’t need the number of lawyers we have or the breadth of the formal legal system. We are late in learning that, but various forms of restorative justice have gradually become accepted here.”