Far from parades and cookouts, Portland lawyer Robert Hirshon spent his Fourth of July amid bombed-out buildings in the Balkans.

Hirshon, president-elect of the American Bar Association, was in the war torn region to help local officials and legal scholars rebuild a system of laws that was crushed by years of ethnic cleansing and authoritarian rule.

Speaking by cellular phone Wednesday from Sarajevo, capital of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hirshon said he was amazed by the devastation, but heartened by the determination of local residents to rebuild, not just their homes but also a legal system to support their fledgling governments. As he was speaking, he passed a bombed-out building on his way into town from the airport.

“This area has been totally dehumanized and they’re trying to build it back up,” he said.

Hirshon, a partner with Drummond, Woodsum and MacMahon, is spending two weeks in the region as part of the ABA’s Central and East European Law Initiative. He is traveling with the group’s executive director. It is his first trip to the Balkans.

In the region of Kosovo, he met with the Chamber of Advocates, an emerging association of lawyers and judges similar to the ABA. The group is building a legal system from scratch by deciding, for example, what lawyers should do. Many of the region’s judges and lawyers were driven away as part of the ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Hirshon also met with professors trying to develop a criminal code. He said it was interesting to see them borrow aspects from many different countries as their efforts are influenced by the constant presence of international peacekeepers there.

Upon first arriving in Kosovo, scene of the bloody crackdown for which former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is now facing a United Nations tribunal in The Hague, Hirshon said he was overwhelmed by the presence of the international community there. Nearly every aspect of life is now run by an international peacekeeping force.

If the international forces were to leave soon, Hirshon said the shaky new government would surely fail. It will take years to rebuild the region’s governments and infrastructure, he said. Still, the 51-year-old Cape Elizabeth resident said, Kosovo felt very safe.

As for the Milosevic tribunal, Hirshon said Kosovars with a lot of education were “delighted” by the proceedings because they have no love for the man accused of wartime atrocities, such as murder and ethnic and religious persecution. The average citizen, however, did not seem to be paying much attention to the proceedings because they are focused on rebuilding, Hirshon said.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed or forced to flee during the Kosovo crackdown two years ago that ended after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Yugoslav forces to hand over the province to the United Nations and a NATO-led peacekeeping force.

Milosevic also may be indicted for offenses during similar ethnic cleansing campaigns in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which also were part of Yugoslavia.

Hirshon said he was taken with the fact that everyone he met had horrid tales to tell about the war.

“Everybody has a story about being tortured and family members disappearing,” he said during a brief cellular phone conversation that was at times crystal clear and at other times, plagued by static.

Talking with average citizens in Kosovo, who expressed gratitude to the United States for helping to end the conflict and Milosevic’s rule, made him proud to be an American, Hirshon said before the phone line went dead.

He was headed Wednesday afternoon to the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo for a Fourth of July gathering. He said he hoped for a simple cookout, but instead was prepared for a dress-up affair.

The ABA trip will officially wrap up July 12 in Zagreb, Croatia, where the group’s Central and East European Law Initiative’s executive board will hold its meeting. Board member U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will be in attendance.

Hirshon then will travel to Prague in the Czech Republic to present an ABA humanitarian award to Czech President Vaclav Havel before returning home.