Soul & Law provides a GIS-enabled Atlas and Knowledge Hub that aggregates verified data on restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and trauma‑informed law across jurisdictions. The platform offers searchable, exportable entries with API access and a curated newsletter for researchers, policymakers, and legal practitioners.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers lack a centralized, verifiable source that maps where restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and trauma‑informed law are formally integrated. Existing information is scattered across academic publications, legislative records, and isolated program reports, making comparative research and policy design inefficient. This fragmentation hampers the ability to identify best practices and to scale human‑centered legal reforms globally.
Solution
Soul & Law addresses this gap by operating a dual‑purpose platform: a Knowledge Hub that aggregates peer‑reviewed research, case narratives, multimedia interviews, and curated resource lists; and the Soul & Law Atlas, an open‑access, GIS‑enabled map that visualizes jurisdictions with legislated or institutionalized restorative and therapeutic legal frameworks. Contributions are vetted against academic or official documentation before inclusion, ensuring data reliability. Users can search, filter, and export entries via a web dashboard that supports standard metadata schemas and API access for integration with institutional repositories. The platform also offers a subscription‑based newsletter that delivers curated insights and updates to a community of academics, legal professionals, and students. By consolidating dispersed evidence into a searchable, interoperable resource, the service accelerates comparative analysis, informs policy development, and supports the diffusion of human‑centered justice practices worldwide.
Target Audience
Primary users are academic researchers, law faculty, policy analysts, and legal practitioners focused on restorative and therapeutic justice, as well as graduate students and NGOs seeking evidence‑based models for program design.
Features
- GIS‑based Atlas displaying verified implementations of restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and trauma‑informed law at national and sub‑national levels
- Structured verification workflow that requires citation of peer‑reviewed articles, legislative texts, or official reports before entry acceptance
- Advanced search and facet filtering (by jurisdiction, practice type, sector) with export options in CSV, JSON, and RDF formats via a public API
- Curated Knowledge Hub containing analytical research papers, real‑world case studies, podcast episodes, and a library of books, films, and toolkits
- Metadata tagging aligned with the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) to facilitate interoperability with academic databases
- Contributor portal with role‑based access controls, allowing researchers and practitioners to submit new cases and track review status
- Monthly newsletter delivering concise briefs, newly added Atlas entries, and upcoming webinars to subscribed users
- Secure, GDPR‑compliant hosting with end‑to‑end encryption for all uploaded documents and user data