Justice, data, and coffee: Interning with WJP in Washington, D.C.
About the author: Allyse Feitzinger’24 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the World Justice Project. Allyse is currently majoring in International Relations at Stanford University.
As I pass the halfway mark of my time on the World Justice Project team, I find myself reflecting on what I have learned and experienced so far. What skills and understandings have I gained sitting each day at the intern bay as my focus flits from screen to screen and my fingers flip through reports?
Each morning, I brew a cup of coffee over the stove in my apartment, pack a lunch I (hopefully) prepared the night before, and walk to the Metro to kick off my 30-minute commute. The path is more than familiar by now — I breeze by glimpses of the White House and the Washington Monument peeking past the buildings lining K Street, barely registering that I am in a city where things happen. Pushing through glass doors, I greet the guard in the lobby and tap my key fob, watching numbers ascend until the elevator opens to the twelfth floor.
I work as a research intern on the Rule of Law Index team in the Washington, D.C, office. Employing an original framework which incorporates expert opinions and observations, general-population surveys, and third-party quantitative data, WJP aggregates information on eight different rule-of-law factors to produce individualized country scores annually. Simply explaining the process is a complicated endeavor — hence why we have an entire team working on it.
Work comes in waves. Sometimes the beat of our tasks is slower, more dispersed. Other weeks will operate with a rapid rhythm, deadlines looming and to-do lists growing. A couple weeks into my time here, we began the process of qualitatively reviewing reports and validating our quantitative data. The annual season of score checks is notorious around the office. Monitors are filled with colorful spreadsheets and dozens of pages of notes. Energy begins to lag as the computer’s clock reads closer and closer to five. Measuring the rule of law is no simple task.
Rule of law is an expansive concept and difficult to define, yet it is nearly universally understood to be critical to good governance, democracy, and human rights. I find myself breathing a sigh of relief when someone inquiring about my work is already familiar with the concept — otherwise I am forced to ask, “how much time do you have?” The breadth of rule of law, the factors which it encompasses, and its profound impact across societies makes measurement and monitoring imperative–another reason for a well-trained team devoted to the task, uniquely equipped to navigate rule of law’s complexities. The organization provides comprehensive information on the justice ecosystem to encapsulate this elusive idea and catalyze data-driven positive change, making the conceptual concrete and illuminating its very real effects.
Eventually, the evening rolls around, chasing the afternoon slump slightly improved by my post-lunch coffee. I sign off and close out of tab after tab that I hardly remember opening. The air is still hot and humid as I walk outside — a confusing phenomenon for someone who has lived in California her entire life. During the journey back to the Metro, my mind is occupied by trying to optimize my crosswalk timing each block. Maybe I begin to strategize dinner for the night, struggling to remember what I bought during my Monday grocery run. The concept of a nine-to-five is unfamiliar to me — usually around this time I would be gearing up for a nighttime study session, maybe opening a PSET or editing a paper.
At Stanford, my prior work experience and studies occupy tangential spaces — areas which are intertwined with justice and rule of law yet largely focused within the geopolitical security space. I’ve discovered that my intellectual immersion into the rule of law interacts profoundly with my academic work in the international security realm, creating a multidimensional understanding of human security and a desire to ensure it.
