The American Association for the International Commission of Jurists (AAICJ) is 501(c)(3) nonprofit, forging new pathways to support essential members of the justice profession, to help build a society where everyone is truly equal under the law. Initially founded in 1967, the AAICJ is built from a base of litigators, judges, and legal scholars. Our work is aimed at supporting and augmenting the work of the International Commission of Jurists, an affiliated organization based in Geneva. 

Our two primary projects are both pertain to increasing access to justice, and improving the rule of law. The first pertains to protecting lawyers, and justice workers at risk worldwide. The second pertains to improving access to justice in the U.S. by advocating for an expanded role for justice workers who are not lawyers.

Justice workers around the world are threatened and silenced daily by retaliatory disbarment, threats, physical violence, malicious prosecution, sentencing, and death. Despite this, there is no reliable source of global information about the prevalence of these attacks, and the steps taken to monitor, address and combat them. The AAICJ is creating a global database to track attacks against lawyers and advocates, which will raise the profile of this issue worldwide, and better protect legal workers and their clients at risk.

On the domestic front, access to justice initiatives routinely fail to heed international calls to consider how civil justice access issues are compounded for racial minorities and isolated communities. To support the equal protections element of access to justice, legal empowerment requires more funding, and should be supported and encouraged by the legal community. The AAICJ is seeking to help build this bridge. The AAICJ is investigating New York’s unauthorized practice of law regime, to advocate for changes that empower justice workers to continue to use and help shape the law with support, not reprisal, from the state.