Stephen Golub is an international development scholar and consultant with experience in 40 countries spanning the globe. He has worked with numerous multilateral and bilateral agencies, foundations, policy institutes, universities and NGOs. 

Mr. Golub’s main focus is the growing field of legal empowerment. He coined the term in a 2001 Asia Foundation/ADB report and has helped pioneer the concept since then. In the 2012-13 academic year he will teach the first U.S. course on this topic, at the University of California at Berkeley Law School.

His professional background also embraces social justice, governance, civil society, the rule of law, human rights, non-state justice systems, democracy, accountability/anti-corruption, gender, refugees, post-conflict states and project design and evaluation.   

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Golub has led consulting and research teams of up to 20 members for the Ford Foundation, the Asia Foundation, the ADB, Amideast, DFID, USAID, UNDP and the Global Network for Public Interest Law.  His background also includes:

• Several dozen other consultancies and research assignments in all major regions of the world, including for the Open Society Foundations, the World Bank, the Danish and Dutch development agencies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Amnesty International, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Oxfam Novib, the International Council on Human Rights Policy, the International Development Law Organization and Transparency International.
• Teaching at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, Central European University and Tufts University.
• Editing four volumes and writing over 30 papers on legal empowerment and related themes. 

Mr. Golub is available for consulting, research and speaking engagements.

Legal empowerment is the use of law and rights specifically by and for the disadvantaged, to increase their control over their lives. International and country-specific institutions increasingly promote legal empowerment because: 

• It integrates rights and development to directly address the priorities of the poor.
• Such integration bolsters socioeconomic progress, poverty alleviation, service delivery, governance, state accountability and development effectiveness.
• An increasing number of studies document legal empowerment’s impact.
• It contrasts with conventional approaches to building the rule of law (ROL), which focus most resources on improving government systems and laws that might eventually, indirectly benefit the poor.
• It thus complements conventional ROL work in some respects and serves as an effective alternative in others.