Strategic Philanthropy and International Strategies

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the Ford Foundation’s grantmaking in the field of legal education. Relying on budget data from the 1950s to the 2000s, we find that the Ford Foundation’s investments in law schools and legal education promoted the reliance on legal expertise for addressing problems of governance, both within the US and abroad. Across different political eras, this notably included the fields of human rights, social justice, international law, trade and commerce, and international development. Internationally, these investments also helped to build greater autonomy for lawyers and legal education from the state. The chapter further demonstrates how the Ford Foundation’s investments were often internationally directed in ways that encouraged law schools to create links between US-based law professors and elites abroad. The chapter further concludes that through grantmaking to law schools and legal education, the Ford Foundation has invested in models of legal expertise as foundational to statemaking.