W&L Law’s Johanna Bond Receives Fulbright to Study Legal Aid Access in Africa
Washington and Lee law professor Johanna Bond has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to study access to legal aid in criminal proceedings in Africa. Her research will be focused on mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.
Bond will conduct her research January through June 2015. She will work in partnership with scholars at the University of Dar es Salaam and will also teach a course in human rights at the University while in residence there.
Bond says that within the last three years, there have been significant advances in the United Nations’ articulation of standards for the provision of legal aid around the globe, which in turn has led to an increased focus on implementation at national and regional levels.
“My project will assess the important work that is already occurring in Tanzania concerning access to legal aid in criminal proceedings,” says Bond. “I will also seek to highlight remaining challenges to the implementation of the international standards, offer insights and strategies from other successful regional efforts to improve the provision of legal aid, and explore the role that academic institutions in the U.S. and Tanzania might continue to play in improving access to legal aid.”
Bond is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2014-2015. The Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institute of International Education. Also receiving Fulbright awards for next academic year are law professors Jill Fraley and J.D. King.
A distinguished scholar in the area of international human rights law and gender and the law, Bond was selected previously as a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2001 and traveled to Uganda and Tanzania to conduct research that later resulted in her edited book, “Voices of African Women: Women’s Rights in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania.” Her recent publications include “Honor as Property” in the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, “Victimization & the Complexity of Gender in Armed Conflict” in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law, and “A Decade After Abu Ghraib: Lessons in ‘Softening Up The Enemy’ and Sex-based Humiliation” in the Journal of Law and Inequality.
In addition to teaching Torts and Family Law, Bond leads an international human rights practicum in W&L’s innovative third-year curriculum. During the class, students learn to apply the primary international and regional human rights treaties to real-world human rights problems. The class, which includes international travel to investigate possible human rights abuses, results in an official human rights report that foreign governments and organizations can use to address the problems.
Prior to joining the faculty of W&L in 2008, Bond was an associate professor of law at the University of Wyoming and before that a visiting associate professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center for several years. She also served as the executive director of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program, a non-profit organization housed at Georgetown.
Before beginning her teaching career, Bond was a law clerk for the Honorable Ann D. Montgomery, United States District Court, District of Minnesota from 1997 to 1998. She holds a B.A. from Colorado College, a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.
