Unique Contributions

Is there a Rule of Law crisis?

• Ian McDougall and Alison Manchester • Season 3 • Episode 1

Share episode

To mark the launch of our third series of Unique Contributions, our host, YS Chi, explores the issue of the Rule of Law and how to make it universal and relevant for everyone. YS Chi asks Ian McDougall, general counsel of LexisNexis Legal & Professional and president of LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, if there's a Rule of Law crisis? And if so, how do we maintain trust, the glue that keeps it all together. 

In a further conversation, YS Chi talks to Alison Manchester, vice president of product management at LexisNexis Legal & Professional. In the context of a loss of confidence in the voting system in the US, Alison talks about the LexisNexis US Voting Laws and Legislation Center, a free resource that allows everyone to see first-hand all voting law activities that are happening at state and federal levels, without relying on rumour or social media. 



This podcast is brought to you by RELX.

YS Chi:

The Unique Contributions podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting relx.com.

Ian McDougall:

Corruption levels, life expectancy, even infant mortality rates, all of these things improve when the rule of law is stronger. And that's the message that we have to get out. We have to stop talking to a small community and start talking to people about the why.

YS Chi:

Hello, and welcome to series three of Unique Contributions, a RELX podcast, where we bring you closer to some of the most interesting people from around our business. I'm YS Chi and I'll be exploring with my guests some of the biggest issues that matter to society. In this series, I also want to investigate the issue of trust. How can we build trust in data and technology and help create a world that works for everyone? I'm very excited to dive in. And today my first guest is Ian McDougall, who is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of LexisNexis Legal and Professional here at RELX. He's also president of LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, and has a personal commitment to advance the rule of law. Ian travels the world to educate groups on the element of the rule of law, and the importance of a strong rule of law for economic growth, stable societies, and other outcomes such as enhanced life expectancy. So Ian, given everything happening in the world right now, I've heard many people say we are at a geopolitical crossroads. In your opinion, is there a rule of law crisis today?

Ian McDougall:

Well, hello, YS, and hello, everyone. First of all, I'd say by way of background that the rule of law, I think has always been under threaten in one way or another since the idea was first thought about, I know we're going to get a chance to talk about what the rule of law means a little later, but the important point I want to make here is a very historical concept dates back far into history. So anyone who studies human history will know the rule of law has been under attack at different stages in history. If we look back at history, we see advances and then there are dark periods, World War Two, the Cold War, coups, abuses. But I'd say we're in a far better place now than we've been in history. So the way I look at it is two steps forward and one step backwards quite regularly.

YS Chi:

And you are looking back at history. And as we all know, history repeats itself. Are there any patterns that you actually see Ian when it steps back? And when we finally make steps forward?

Ian McDougall:

Yes, I think there is a pattern that recurs. And that is the emergence and reemergence of complacency. The moment that we start to feel this rule of law thing that's done and dusted, we can move on to something else, is the very moment that it comes back to bite us. And so I don't believe there is ever going to be a time in the future where we can actually just rub our hands together and say, right, great, that's done. I think it's going to be a case of permanent vigilance, constantly protecting and advancing the rule of law.

YS Chi:

So Ian, as a world traveller yourself, how do you see the world today we live in where communication is completely global, right? Movement is global. Everybody knows what's happening on the other side of the globe? And so how does that affect the rule of law being able to make advances? Does it help to see or does it hurt?

Ian McDougall:

Yeah, I think, unfortunately, I'm gonna give you the answer, which is both are true again. To me, education is always the foundation of change. You have to know what the issue is, before you can find the right solution. So many, including the legal profession, talk about the rule of law, and many don't even understand what it is. And, you know, I often joke that if I asked five lawyers to define the rule of law, I'd get six different answers. But there's still a massive flaw in the way we engage with the non legal community. The rule of law sounds like some kind of academic technical subject and we confine ourselves to saying to people, this is the right thing to do, just trust us. It is where I think those days are gone, particularly with social media and and international kind of technology, changing the way that people view information and the way that they accept or don't accept information. So now we have to double our efforts, we have to explain to people why the rule of law is the right thing to do, why it's not only the right thing to do, but why it's also in their self interest to do it.

YS Chi:

So I'm going to shortly ask you that question. But before that, I'd like to put you on the spot one more time. You know, rule of law says following the law, right? So if two different communities define two different rules, is it sufficient that each of those communities follow their unique set of rules?

Ian McDougall:

Well, so what I'm going to do then is to define what we mean by the rule of law, because there is a difference between laws and the rule of law, it's perfectly possible to have a system of governance where you have laws, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've got the rule of law. So if I can just take a moment to explain what we mean by the rule of law, and I think that will answer your question. So I mentioned before, it's a long history. And, you know, some time ago, we wanted to find a way of producing a universal, a universally applicable definition of the rule of law. And so instead of sitting in a room with a group of wise people, we said, let's look at what societies around the world have understood the rule of law to mean, even if that expression was never actually used, what are the core underlying principles we can apply to any political system, any socio economic context, and we looked at Hammurabi code, the Juris Civilis Upanishad, writings of Hindu thought, Arabic, Middle Ages, scholarship, Plato, the Magna Carta, but what we came down to is four consistent themes that come through. Equality before the law, an independent judiciary, transparency of the law, you have to know what it is to be bound by it, and access to remedy. So my point there, once I kind of explained that is to say, we don't actually comment on a specific law, this law, that law, good law, bad law, comparative law in that way, what we talk about is that if you implement those four themes, your society will benefit. And the reason why that's important, if I can just say is that, that enables me to be non political. I don't have to enter the political fray. We've defined the rule of law as something that's non political. That means I can speak to everybody. And I think that's, that's really important. So we deliberately don't comment on this particular law, that particular law, what we say is, here is the framework to make your society more successful.

YS Chi:

And Ian, as you go around the world trying to help each community conform to these sets of definition. Are you finding uniform acceptance of these four principles?

Ian McDougall:

Yes, absolutely. I can say that for a couple of reasons. One, and I say this as a friend of the United Nations having had a seat on a United Nations Committee, but the definitions, for example, that the UN gives runs to six pages. And that's useless to any practical extent, what we do is come up with these for non political, non society specific pillars. And whenever I get the chance to explain to people what the rule of law means, I absolutely promise you I am greeted by a roomful of nodding heads. And the very next question I get asked us, so how can we help to do this?

YS Chi:

So give me an example of perhaps a community that is dictatorial today, and how they accept these pillars?

Ian McDougall:

Well, so the problem is that so far, we haven't yet seen a country, you know, with that system of government that follows the rule of law, to the same extent that say, somewhere like Norway does. And the reason I mentioned Norway is that they are, number one on the Transparency International rule of law list. What we tend to find is that dictatorial governments, by their nature, tend to abuse things like the independence of the judiciary, or access to remedy. And as a result, they harm themselves and they harm the people that they're governing.

YS Chi:

And exactly that point is that they would not agree that these principles are correct then?

Ian McDougall:

Well, so here's here's the thing, that while we haven't seen it yet, I've explained to many audiences around the world it is perfectly compatible to have a non democratic system of government that follows those four principles of the rule of law. And I was even if I can say this, I was giving a speech at the United Nations and an ambassador stood up from a country that I won't name and said, "We see this as a Trojan horse for regime change". And I replied to him, pointing at the screen behind me, which had the four pillars up, I said, if you can point to one of those principles that requires regime change, then I'll agree with you. And fortunately for me sat down in silence. But that's the important point, I'm able to have the same conversation with practically any government that's willing to listen, regardless of the way that they currently govern themselves.

YS Chi:

This is very exciting. Now, over the past 18 years that I've been a part of the RELX family, I've observed tremendous impact that this work of rule of law has had in all corners of the world, where our colleagues from LexisNexis Legal and Professional creatively and passionately applied our unique skills and network in this domain. It's very clear, Ian that your team has given a lot of thought to the concept, the rule of law and how it has changed throughout history. Outside of the legal community, what is the general public's understanding of this rule of law? And how do you make sure that people understand on the street, that it matters to everyone, not just to the court, the judges, the lawyers?

Ian McDougall:

Well, frankly, you've put your finger on the biggest challenge that we currently face. You know, I started by saying that our real challenge is, is actually to explain the why to people, why this should matter to them, why this should matter to the person who's walking along the street outside the building you're in right now, wherever you are in the world, any building, that's our biggest challenge. The way we do it, of course, as I said, is by education, but more importantly, by trying to make sure that people understand what the connection is to them. And that's one of the great pieces of work that Lexis has been able to do, which is to link the rule of law to various socio economic measures, per capita GDP, corruption levels, life expectancy, even infant mortality rates, all of these things improve when the rule of law is stronger. And that's the message that we have to get out. We have to stop talking to a small community and start talking to people about the why.

YS Chi:

Yes, in fact, the small community of of zealous, you know, passionate, people get it, and they use it from different angles, right? One theme that I want to bring to the discussion right now is the concept of trust, where the trust is the glue that holds everything together. Your definition of rule of law is very appealing. But you don't have to talk about democracy or human rights. Right. So please, elaborate.

Ian McDougall:

So I know it is a question that that comes up quite a lot when I give a talk about this subject. And you know, democracy and human rights are two notable absences from other people's standard definitions. But let me explain very briefly why that's the case. The first thing is democracy. Now, I'm going to first of all give you what is a technical answer to this definitional answer, you cannot have something in the definition that harms the very thing you are trying to define. And there are plenty of occasions throughout history, even modern history, even very recent history, where democracy actually actively harms the rule of law. And you can think, for example, of very, very popular, some people call them populist governments, whose open manifesto states that they will interfere with the independence of the judiciary, for example, or will somehow restrict access to certain rights. All of these things happen sometimes with popular support. And the other thing that's absent is human rights. And the reason for that is all rights are dependent upon the rule of law, not the other way around, to have rights, to have a system, you have to have the foundation of the rule of law. If there's no rule of law, there are no human rights. If there's no contract system, there's no democracy is nothing. You can only enforce these kinds of rights, if you have an independent judiciary, treating you equally with transparent laws, giving you access to remedy these are the things that are necessary. Even if you want democracy, for example, if you want to have a fully functioning democracy, you need that system to underpin it. And if I can just say as well, you'll note I've not used the word justice at any point in this. And that's because justice is also a concept that's dependent upon the principles I've outlined. It's built on all the four pillars. So I say the rule of law is the system that delivers justice, not the other way around.

YS Chi:

So then, how does your team and everyone at RELX who's involved help speak to the street as opposed to the experts or the committed?

Ian McDougall:

Yes. So, first of all, one of the most powerful things that we've done is something that I think you'll be talking about in a little while, which is the US voting law initiative. Now, that's an example of something where we are taking information and making it freely available to whoever wants to use it. Another example, which is one of our biggest contributions is the eyeWitness to Atrocities app, a fantastic innovation, which is freely available for everyone to use. It's an app which is downloadable upon people's smartphones, and enables them to record things like human rights, atrocities or crimes against humanity. And it it, it gets sent to a Lexis server, it gets reviewed by a panel of human rights lawyers from the International Bar Association. And here's the amazing thing, it leaves no trace on the user's phone that it was ever used. So if some nasty security service comes along, grabs it, there's no evidence that that phone was the cause of the incriminating video. And here's how that's directly helped. That freely available app contributed to convictions within a year of its release of two people in the Democratic Republic of Congo for war crimes.

YS Chi:

Right? And it is right now being used as we speak in other places.

Ian McDougall:

Yes, yes, exactly. In fact, since the conflict in Ukraine, started, there have been over 10,000 submissions received by Lexis from the eyeWitness app,

YS Chi:

Indeed, and yet, when this was first mentioned, to many lawmakers and rule makers, throughout the European Union, they were completely unaware.

Ian McDougall:

Yes, indeed. And we have a big challenge ahead of us, you know, awareness. As I say, education is the biggest challenge we have. I mean, me and my team spend a lot of our time going out talking about this, you know, literally to any audience that is prepared to, to listen to us. So for example, a recent speech I was able to give was at the British American Business Association in New York. And, you know, a lot of the most significant companies in the world were there. And many of them were putting their hands up saying, how do we help? How do we get involved in this?

YS Chi:

Ian, you've been doing this thing for a long time to know that some of the best ways to educate are the next generation as opposed to putting our hopes on the current generation? Right. Yeah. So are there alliances that you foresee that will help educate the next generation on this rule of law so that they are much more aware than we are?

Ian McDougall:

Yeah, I mean, because we are very involved, obviously, in the legal profession, a lot of our contacts come through that. So, for example, we helped to create the Young Lawyers Committee of the International Bar Association. And we've done the same for other associations. In other words, to bring young lawyers in at an early stage to these kinds of discussions. We're also very proud of our work that we're doing with the historically black colleges in the United States, where there are a number of people working on projects to erase systemic racism in the US justice system. And all of these acts, all of these connections, I believe, are creating wonderful advocates, from the younger generation

YS Chi:

That's great. Ian, I'm very curious, personally, how did you get involved so deeply and so passionately about this important area?

Ian McDougall:

Well, it's interesting, because I consider myself to have a very overdeveloped sense of justice. And what I mean by that is from a very, very young age, I was touched by a particular story that I read when I was 10 years old, actually, I was touched by a particular story that I read in the UK, which was about a miscarriage of justice, and the person at the time, the UK had the death penalty. So an innocent person was hung, as a result of that miscarriage of justice, and it really emotionally affected me as a young person. And from that point on, I kind of became very passionate about this kind of subject and, and trying to make the world a better place through the foundation. I believe that once you get the foundation, right, you've got a much better chance of building a stronger building. And so that was really the origin of my interest in the subject. And then of course, being able to join Lexis, which is just an absolutely fantastic opportunity to play a leading role in the legal profession.

YS Chi:

Well, the story is clearly very personal, but it's more than, you know, an inspiring incident that took you down this path of being the such amazing flagbearer and the impact that we're having, I mean, you cannot walk around LexisNexis Legal and Professional and have anyone who doesn't understand what we really believe in.

Ian McDougall:

Yes, it's wonderful. And everyone across Lexis feels this way. I think it's, I very often I say to audiences that there is no company. As such, there are 11,000 people around the world wanting to do something good for the world. And that's really the way I look at it.

YS Chi:

And fortunately, we have another 25,000 or so people in the sister companies all within RELX that feel exactly the same way about other issues like science and education and health, and so on and so forth. Well, Ian, thank you so much for joining us. But more importantly, thank you for what you've been doing all these years leading this important activity for us.

Ian McDougall:

Thank you, thank you very much.

YS Chi:

Like Ian my next guest helps RELX promote the rule of law. Alison Manchester is Vice President of Product Management at LexisNexis Legal and Professional, she has made some incredible contributions to the company throughout her 34 years here. That's right, I think I finally found someone who has worked at RELX longer than myself! Alison's work at LexisNexis Legal and Professional has been a vital fusion of technology with the practice of law. So before we talk about the exciting new project you recently launched, let's give listeners some background. Having been at LexisNexis for over 30 years, both you and the company have gone through many transitions, right. Starting off as an attorney editor, you have now settled into a product management position, developing what we call technology of law. What do you mean by that?

Alison Manchester:

Hi YS. Yes, great to speak with you this morning. I began with Lexis as an attorney editor back 34 years ago, as you say, and my initial job was reading and analysing court cases, to understand how the new case law impacted prior law. And back in those days, we captured that analysis on little slips of paper, believe it or not, and we gathered those up and those slips of paper were ultimately, our so called database, and we created reference books out of that material. And I've had the opportunity, working at Lexis to see that entire trajectory from that time, up through moving to data processing, where we used computer punch cards to capture data, to using desktop computers, and digital databases. And now fast forward to the present day, where we're leveraging cutting edge technologies like machine learning, data science, to do that work that was done on paper. So technology law to me is all about developing those really advanced solutions, so that we make lawyers or researchers lives easier and their jobs more effective. And today, our digital repositories, at Lexis contain multi millions of documents. And so it's really a challenging task for people doing research to get through all of that. And what we do is provide those tools and capabilities so that lawyers and researchers can pull out trends, understand the data and really get to their answers more quickly.

YS Chi:

So I remember when LexisNexis for Microsoft Word was launched. It was very exciting. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Alison Manchester:

Yes, I was one of the inventors of that product. And I was really excited to be a part of that, we had a great team. That was really a nice marriage of the technology, presented by Microsoft, it was embedded within Microsoft Word and our expertise at Lexis around content and legal analysis, legal information. And so we combined our research capabilities within Microsoft Word, and allowed people to do research from their document as they were performing their tasks day to day, which made for a much more effective way to do their work. And that's something we're all about today as well. And that product today is currently incorporated within our our platform Lexis+.

YS Chi:

Right, and there are many of these iterations of technology advancement that we are implementing. So where do you get the ideas from? Do you just go out there and listen to all the lawyers or do they give you feedback? How do you start these ideas?

Alison Manchester:

The ideas come from our customers. First and foremost, we have a really extensive programme led by our UX team, but our product team is instrumental in that as well, around listening to our customers, and gathering that feedback, and understanding what their needs are in doing their tasks day to day. So we look for those pain points, those problems that they're really having challenges solving. And we try to come up with solutions for them. And then we leverage those customers as we go through the entire development cycle. So we're getting feedback all the way along. From the time an idea comes to mind to putting pictures on paper to define the concept to, at the end of the day, testing the final product so that people can take a look and tell us if it's really hitting the mark in terms of what they need.

YS Chi:

Gotcha. I think that this process is gonna be going to be going on for a long time as technology really enhances productivity. Today, I want to talk about how the technology of law has been applied to something called LexisNexis US Voting Laws and Legislation Center. Since a couple of years ago, we've seen a loss of confidence in the voting system in the US from claims of election fraud, to scrutiny over laws that restrict voting rights? With all that in the background. How did LexisNexis US Voting Law Center, go from being an idea to a reality?

Alison Manchester:

Well, I really have to give credit, first of all, to Mike Walsh for putting forward the idea and rounding us up to put it into implementation. It was really a project that he wanted to pursue. And he worked with Nigel Roberts, who is our head of Global Associations, and part of our rule of law team, one of the founders, who then called me, because my role at Lexis involves primary law, and primary law content, including case law and statutes, regulations, etc. So they called me and I thought it was a fantastic project. It's something that is near and dear to my heart, I think the rule of law initiative is extremely important across the globe. And so I was excited to be part of it. And I certainly didn't have the knowledge or capability to do this all by myself. And so I gathered up a group of experts who were volunteers on this project. We had over 50 people who volunteered to work on this particular initiative from various parts of the company, including technology, data science, product management, user experience, and design, editorial, and many other areas across the company. And we used the methodologies that we use on a commercial side of the business to take this idea forward. So just to illustrate, one of the ideas that we use, day to day in developing concepts is the Amazon Working Backwards process. And if people haven't heard about that, it's something that Amazon uses to drive innovation within the company. We had an opportunity a couple of years back to work with the Amazon team. And they taught us how to implement that. So in this voting law project, we used this process, which involves taking a concept and then leaping forward into the future, and imagining how that ultimate concept would play out and become a real product. And then the end result of that is that you draft a press release, and define exactly what this thing would be if it were all built and ready to go. So with voting low project, we did just that. We had a workshop, we talked about the concept and defined it. And then we tried to fully define it through the press release that we wrote, which was a draft that ultimately became a roadmap for development of the project as we went forward.

YS Chi:

So tell me, is this unique? Or are there other people trying to do this? You just do it better? Or tell me a little bit about where this sits contextually?

Alison Manchester:

Well, I think we, at Lexis are uniquely positioned to do something like this, because we have an unmatched repository of legislative and regulatory data, as well as court data and legal information. So we have this repository of data that is unequal and we can provide that as a part of this initiative. There are a couple of other websites out there that do similar things. They give updates on the status of voting law across the country, they may give roundups of what's happening, current events, that kind of thing. Generally speaking, they don't give you the laws themselves. And they don't have the level of detail and the source documents available that we provide to people, as well as some of the features that we provide as well. And in fact, we not only give people the laws themselves, but we keep those updated. So if there are changes, or new things going on, we can include those and update those on the site within a day or so which is really unique. And again, in doing that we're leveraging all of our capabilities within LexisNexis which involves being a market leading collection operation, collecting from courts and legislatures and agencies around the country on a daily, weekly hourly basis and then updating that accordingly. So we were able to leverage all of those capabilities in creating this voting law site, which just to illustrate how much content is there - Today, we have about 40,000 legal documents on the voting law site. And we're adding to that constantly.

YS Chi:

So this is a perfect example of what we call unique contribution, isn't it? Because it's the stuff that we do daily anyway. And we just simply re-leverage it.

Alison Manchester:

That's absolutely right. It's really our core expertise that's been leveraged to make this voting law site a reality. And it's really exciting.

YS Chi:

Yeah, I bet. So one of the main issues with information outlet these days, as you know, is about trust. As the US becomes more and more polarised, people are increasingly sceptical about the objectivity of the things they see in the media and the news. And this is not, of course, unique to the United States today. For a topic as sensitive as voting laws claims of bias are especially prevalent. So how do you ensure that the centre is unbiased?

Alison Manchester:

We have spent a lot of time talking about that, as you can imagine. Our mission was to make sure that the content was fact based, and not partisan in any way, and really give an unbiased fact based view to the public, so that we could answer those questions that people might have as they are looking at changes to voting law across the country. So to do that, first and foremost, we relied on user feedback to assess what we were doing and tell us whether we were incorporating any partisan slant one way or the other. And one example of the user feedback that we got in developing this product was, as we were looking at the text to put on the website and the descriptions of the features and functionality, one of the terms we were using was "voting rights", quote, unquote. And it was pointed out to us that voting rights can be seen as a partisan thing. Is it a right or is it not a right? And so we determined that rather than use that term, we would take it out. And we just strictly talk about voting legislation. So just one illustration of how that worked.

YS Chi:

That's right. And tell me a little bit about this thing called the ranking system.

Alison Manchester:

Yes, that is something that we're currently working on. And it's something that has been a real challenge, because again, we're trying to make sure that this is absolutely non partisan. And the idea is to rank the states and the laws within the states, both as they currently stand, and as things change over time. And as you can imagine doing so, I think it's going to be really tricky to do that in a way that's truly fact based and nonpartisan. So I don't know that we've cracked that nut quite yet. We're still talking with customers about that currently, and designing proposal, a test system that we will take out to customers and continue to get feedback until we get it right.

YS Chi:

Right. I'm excited to see how this project will empower voters throughout the country. In the best case scenario, how will this centre actually help US voters?

Alison Manchester:

Well, hopefully it will give people a place to go and see the law firsthand. There are lots of news stories. And there are lots of conversations that take place on social media. And people today, I think don't know whether it's true or not. They don't know really what the truth is many times. And so what we hope to do with the site is give people a fact based free, free to the public, place to go to really validate those things that they hear, and make sure that they can understand really what is going on. What are the facts as they stand? What are the changes that are taking place, and educate themselves so that they are working with factual information and not rumour or bias or anything else. So just an example of that, if I were someone in New York, and say I had been on social media and had heard that people who were incarcerated were allowed to vote, well, I could then go to our voting law site, I could look at the map that's on the first page and drill in to the laws that are currently existing and in progress in New York. And I would see that that law, while it was introduced has not been passed. And it is not yet enacted in any way. So you know, it's just an example of what you can do with the site to just see exactly what's going on firsthand. You can go to the documents, you can go to see the people involved. We show the sponsor information for bills as they're going through the committee process. So you can see exactly what's happening within legislatures in the States and also at the federal level and you can only see firsthand the activity without relying on rumour or social media?

YS Chi:

How will you evolve this? I mean, this is such a new service, right? Can you tell us some roadmap to where you want to take forward?

Alison Manchester:

Yes, absolutely. In fact, we are conducting more customer discussions, user discussions now with people who have used the site. And we've had some really positive reaction, by the way, we've had a number of people reach out and offer their help and input after they've used the sites, we're following up, we are getting their feedback as to what they would like to see what would be most important for them. And by them, I mean, it's members of the general public, it's legislators, it's journalists, all types of different people who are finding value in this site. And so we're taking that feedback and looking at what they're telling us and mapping out the next phase. And at this point, it's still in progress in planning. But we're thinking that we would want to add some court case content. So as the courts interpret the laws that we're displaying on the site, we'll want to cover that interpretation as well. And we want to add some of the state constitutions, because some of the state constitutions also incorporate voting laws within those provisions, you know, it's unique state to state. So those are two examples of things we hope to include.

YS Chi:

Yeah, indeed, this is not just at the national level, but at the state level, as well, and sometimes even down to the municipalities. So this will be very exciting to see how it evolves. And together with things like the app for atrocities, you know, these are some truly unique contributions to our society, by leveraging the content, the expertise of technology that we use every day, and that this really benefits the society overall. Well, I can't thank you enough for joining us, Alison today. And I hope that you will give us continually the exciting improvements that you're going to be making to this Center.

Alison Manchester:

Well, thank you very much. This is a passion project for sure for all of us working on it. And it's really been a pleasure to be part of this. We're all very, very excited about being part of the rule of law initiative. So I really appreciate the time today.

YS Chi:

Thank you again. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe button on your podcast app to get new episodes as soon as they're released. Thank you for listening.