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Sudreau Global Justice Institute

Your support for the groundbreaking Sudreau Global Justice Institute fuels Pepperdine Caruso School of Law students and faculty in their quest to reform justice systems throughout the developing world.

All over the developing world, archaic justice systems and backlogged courts force those accused of crimes to spend months, even years, in jail—before they even get to trial. Through Pepperdine’s Sudreau Global Justice Institute, students and faculty at the Caruso School of Law work with prisoners, judges, and lawmakers to bring American-inspired reforms to these systems, helping to provide hope for vulnerable individuals and transformative change to entire nations.

In 2007 students and faculty at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law were offered a unique opportunity: travel to the nation of Uganda in sub-Saharan Africa, meet with accused people who had been languishing in prisons for years without ever seeing a courtroom, and help them resolve their situations through innovations such as plea bargaining. What started as relief for individual prisoners expanded into an effort that reformed Uganda’s entire justice system—and is now being repeated with governments in several other nations. The work of the Sudreau Global Justice Institute is bringing needed relief to thousands of people around the world crying out for justice, and accelerating the kind of democratic reforms that will ensure that justice is preserved.

Through partnerships with four African nations (and counting), Caruso Law students and faculty have provided legal assistance for nearly 3,000 clients. Not only that, they have trained more than 500 justice-sector stakeholders in these nations on judicial reforms and new systems, ensuring that the changes they have helped enact will stand the test of time. With this track record of success, the institute now looks to expand to new countries, and even new continents, in the hope of a freer future for people the world over.

Caruso Law students, and more recently Pepperdine undergraduates as well, get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to truly change the world, combining Pepperdine’s ideals of purpose, service, and leadership in a way that will guide and inspire them for the rest of their lives and careers.