Public Legal Education
Public and Youth Engagement Hub
Public Legal Education Committee
The Bingham Centre engages in a number of different ways to advocate for the rule of law to be a key part of the development of public legal education (PLE) and of civic education more broadly. Since April 2025, we have participated in a Public Legal Education Committee, initially led by the Law Society and Bar Council, and now convened by the Attorney General's Office (AGO).
The committee brings together a range of individuals and organisations that are engaged in PLE work, including young people, NGOs, law firms and civil servants, and is focused on identifying challenges facing the sector and working together to improve the provision of PLE. In our role as chair of a sub-committee, we have participated in the relaunch of the AGO's PLE initiative and new PLE principles, including leading on a new working definition of PLE, as set out below.
Public Legal Education (PLE) covers a wide range of activities aimed at
i) building participants' understanding of legal systems and the rule of law, including how law is made and applied in a democratic society.
ii) empowering participants by increasing their capability to identify legal rights, responsibilities and routes to addressing legal issues in their own lives and communities.
PLE can take a number of forms in a variety of settings: from workshops to stage performances, public campaigns and law reform activities, to podcasts and visual art.
PLE empowers individuals, enabling them to engage with the law in their day-to-day lives, and to be more confident and informed in their interactions with the legal system, public bodies, businesses, and each other. PLE strengthens the rule of law, by creating awareness of the legal foundations of government in a democratic society, and equipping individuals to hold the powerful to account and to get involved in shaping the decisions that affect them and their communities.
PLE is closely connected with community development and civic engagement, as well as with citizenship education and other school subjects and programmes. It complements legal advice, including pro bono services, although it is not legal advice or representation. For a definition of pro bono, please see the Joint Pro Bono Protocol for Legal Work, developed under the auspices of the Attorney General's Pro Bono Coordinating Committee.
We continue to chair the sub-committee, working on monitoring and evaluation in PLE work, examining what we know works and how we can support PLE providers to better measure the impact of their work.
Venice Commission Rule of Law Checklist
We are supporting an official review of the use of the Venice Commission's Rule of Law Checklist, by undertaking research and convening high-level discussions. The Bingham Centre helped to develop the Checklist in 2015 and 2016 as a comprehensive tool to assess a country's adherence to the rule of law. The Checklist is in use across the Council of Europe (the UK and the other 45 states who are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights), and among states outside Europe that also provide Venice Commission members (the three largest by population are: USA, Brazil and Mexico).
In July 2025, we co-convened a special event to mark the 35th anniversary of the Venice Commission, in collaboration with the Attorney General's Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). Members of the Venice Commission, diplomats and civil society experts attended and took part in discussions about issues which the Commission is considering updating in the Rule of Law Checklist. We helped to convene several panels, including on checks and balances which support constitutional democracy, and on public legal education as a foundation for the rule of law.
To promote public legal education specifically, we brought together UK providers of PLE with representatives of the Council of Europe's Advisory Council on Youth, who are elected by young people in European countries. The Advisory Council's support for including rule of law themes in Council of Europe educational initiatives will be a vital route for promoting the rule of law beyond the UK.
The Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT)
The Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) is an education and membership charity that provides resources, advice and training to teachers across the UK. We contributed to the ACT Journal Issue 62, published in November 2025, reaching thousands of ACT members in print and online. In the article, we set out the case for a thick conception of the rule of law - which brings together a more substantive understanding of what the content of the law is and who is impacted by it - and we argue that it should be embedded throughout citizenship education delivery. You can read more of the article here on ACT's website.
