Embodying the Rule of Law: We Each Have a Role to Play
- jhody2
- Jul 10
- 5 min read
I learned the rule of law in a place designed to deny it.
I am a former jailhouse lawyer. Before I was a founder, before I was a professor, before anyone called me an expert, I was a woman in a Florida prison learning the law from other incarcerated people: and then teaching it. In the law library, I watched people arrive holding paperwork they could not read, carrying deadlines they did not know were running, and living under punishments no court had ordered.
And I watched jailhouse lawyers meet them there. Translate. Teach. File. Fight.
I will never forget the day I understood that the law was a tool of power, and not only a tool of punishment. I gained my legal identity and my confidence using the law in that prison law library. And I came to believe that if more people understood what the law was and how to use it, they could have prevented incarceration in the first place. It became my life’s work to give the law away.
Thirteen years home, I have built my life’s work on that understanding. Through the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI), I am in community with more than 1,300 incarcerated legal workers across all fifty states. Through the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH), we train community members to know, use, and shape the law. And from where I stand, I can tell you: the conversation about protecting the rule of law has been incomplete.
WHAT WE DO: Redefining the Rule of Law from the Ground Up
We hear it constantly in moments of political crisis or institutional failure: the rule of law is under threat. Every time, the response looks upward: to courts, to lawyers, to judges. Those actors matter, but if we are serious about protecting the rule of law, we must widen the frame.
The rule of law does not belong to lawyers, courts, or legal institutions. The rule of law belongs to all of us.
It is not just about having laws on paper. It is about whether people can know the law, use the law, challenge the law, and shape the law in their own lives and communities. To embody the rule of law means we do not treat it as an abstract legal concept. We practice it. We teach it. We translate it. We defend it. We hold power accountable when the law is used as a weapon instead of a shield.
At LEAH, we grow justice from the inside out. We work alongside jailhouse lawyers and advocates who have been navigating these systems their entire lives. Our programs are born from a simple belief: that the people most impacted by injustice are best positioned to transform it.
Jailhouse Lawyers: Frontline Guardians of Justice
In prisons and jails: where access to counsel is scarcest and power is most concentrated: jailhouse lawyers are often the beginning of people knowing their rights at all. They are not simply incarcerated people doing legal work. They are legal educators, translators, human rights defenders, and frontline guardians of the rule of law.
If the rule of law survives in the darkest corners of our legal system, it survives anywhere. That is why the people defending it there are not a footnote to this conversation. They are its proof.
Through our work at NYU Law’s Bernstein Institute, we treat jailhouse lawyers as essential legal workers and community paralegals. They document abuse, challenge unlawful punishment, and protect access to the courts. They defend human dignity in the exact places where the law is most often ignored or manipulated.
OUR FRAMEWORK: The Internal Legal Empowerment Cycle
Every program at LEAH is held together by the Internal Legal Empowerment Framework. Rooted in Black feminist praxis and peacebuilding, this framework recognizes that systems transformation begins with people, not just legislation.
We believe that to transform the law, we must first transform how we see ourselves within it. Our framework follows a specific, directional flow:
Know Self → Use Self → Transform Self and Spaces
Know Self: Recognizing your own legal identity and the power of your lived experience.
Use Self: Moving from knowledge to action, using your voice and skills to navigate and challenge systems.
Transform Self and Spaces: Building new legal ecosystems rooted in collective care and accountability.
This is the praxis of our work. It is how we move from being passive recipients of the law to becoming the architects of a more just world.
OUR PROGRAMS: Building the Ecosystem
We create entry points for legal empowerment through three flagship programs that link incarcerated leaders with the broader community:
The Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI): Our home for 1,300+ incarcerated members. We co-create legal education with law schools to equip jailhouse lawyers with the tools they need to defend human rights from within.
Flashlights: A living digital public archive created with Zealous. It documents the history and impact of jailhouse lawyers through letters, artwork, and reflections. It is a testament to the legal labor that has happened behind walls for centuries.
Feminist Circles: Intentional gathering spaces for justice-impacted women and gender-expansive communities. These circles focus on healing justice, legal empowerment, and leadership, ensuring that women can engage in justice work on their own terms.
Everyone Has a Role to Play
The rule of law is an ecosystem, and each of us holds a piece of it.
Those who write and interpret the law must listen to the communities most impacted by the systems they govern. Legislators must fund legal access and repeal laws that produce injustice. Judges must remember that procedure without justice is still harm.
Those who enforce the law must accept that their authority is limited by it. Prosecutors must seek justice, not just convictions. Prison officials must respect the humanity of those in their care.
Those who practice the law must move beyond gatekeeping. Lawyers must ask how they can support community legal knowledge and respect jailhouse lawyers as colleagues.
Those who live under the law: which is all of us: have the most important role. Families are advocates. Community members are witnesses. Journalists and educators are the storytellers of justice.
What Embodiment Demands
It is not enough to say we believe in fairness. We must practice fairness.
It is not enough to say no one is above the law. We must hold powerful people and institutions accountable.
It is not enough to say people have rights. We must make sure people know those rights, can use them, and are not punished for asserting them.
The rule of law is not protected from the top down alone. It is protected from the ground up, through an ecosystem of people who teach, translate, defend, challenge, and reshape the law. I have spent thirteen years giving the law away: naming the expertise that already exists in our communities and creating pathways for it to lead.
This fall, LEAH will hold community conversations inviting all stakeholders: from jailhouse lawyers to judges, from families to legislators: to reimagine the rule of law together.
The question is not only whether the rule of law will survive. The question is: Who will embody it?
And the answer must be: all of us.
Jhody Polk is the founder of the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative and LEAH (Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub), housed at NYU School of Law's Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. She is a 2025 David Prize winner, and a 2018 Soros Justice Fellow. She is a former jailhouse lawyer.
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