Helga Law Journal - 01.01.2021, Page 99

103
Helga Law Journal Vol. 1, 2021
102
International Legal Research Group
International Legal Research Group on
the Right to Protest
The European Law Students' Association

Foreword

1 What is ELSA?
ELSA is a non-political, non-governmental, non-profit making, independent
organisation which is run by and for students. ELSA has 44 Member and Observer
countries with more than 375 Local Groups and 50,000 students. It was founded
in 1981 by 5 law students from Poland, Austria, West Germany and Hungary.
Since then, ELSA has aimed to unite students from all around Europe, provide a
channel for the exchange of ideas and opportunities for law students and young
lawyers to become internationally minded and professionally skilled. Our focus is
to encourage individuals to act for the good of society in order to realise our vision:
“A just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity”.
You can find more information on http://www.elsa.org.
2 Legal Research Groups in ELSA
A Legal Research Group (LRG) is a group of law students and young lawyers
carrying out research on a specified topic of law with the aim to make their
conclusions publicly accessible. Legal research was one of the main aims of ELSA
during our early years. When ELSA was created as a platform for European
cooperation between law students in the 1980s, sharing experience and knowledge
was the main purpose of our organisation. In the 1990s, our predecessors made
huge strides and built a strong association with a special focus on international
exchange. In the 2000s, young students from Western to Eastern Europe were
facing immense changes in their legal systems. Our members were part of such
giant legal developments such as the EU expansion and the implementation of EU
Law. To illustrate, the outcome of the ELSA PINIL (Project on International
Criminal Court National Implementation Legislation) has been the largest
international criminal law research in Europe. In fact, the final country reports
have been used as a basis for establishing new legislation in many European
countries.
The results of our more recent LRGs are available electronically. ELSA for
Children (2012) was published on Council of Europe's web pages and resulted in
a follow up LRG (2014) together with, among others, Missing Children Europe.