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Tensions between societal and legal norms regarding rape shape people's perceptions of the law and the use of various legal strategies. This article investigates what happens when a claim of rape is discredited, resulting in the claimant, instead, being prosecuted for presenting a false accusation. Based on the analysis of verdicts in cases of false accusations of rape, we identify four pathways into the criminal justice process for such cases and three turning points whereby an accusation of rape is contested by the police and instead prosecuted as a false accusation. We conclude that this seems to follow from the strength of the ideal that victims of rape are listened to and encouraged to come forward with their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores litigation as a practice of memorialization through a qualitative study of the legal mobilization to halt and re-site the Norwegian national memorial for the 22 July 2011 terror attack. In arguing that adversarial legal processes initiated by grassroots actors can represent a form of commemorative work with an ambiguous societal status, the article contributes to the emergent literature on transitional justice practices in established democracies and in post-terror contexts. In the Norwegian case, the law became an arena for contested negotiations over the hierarchy of victims. The litigation process also shaped how the fallout of 22 July is understood. Furthermore, this mobilization engendered frictions regarding the potential of future 22 July commemorations to perpetuate trauma. Litigation may be understood as a rupture with the national narrative of law as an accountability tool, because of the stigma and unresolved and painful contestation around democratic citizenship that it produces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many of us who study, or practice legal mobilization, the image of a duck-rabbit can be regarded as a metaphor of the very different world views and vocabularies that legal scholars and legal practitioners as well as social scientists and social activists use in explaining and practising law-based advocacy. Conventional, siloed approaches by academics and practitioners alike are common, though hardly desirable. We feel that rather than ask which vocabulary is more important, it is imperative to focus on the process of how people can understand each other, irrespective of the language and terms they are using. Moreover, we are curious why it is important to make such distinctions in conceptualizing and analysing the context of law-based advocacy and the many forms that legal mobilization adopts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal mobilization is a contested topic. There is little consensus among scholars regarding what legal mobilization is, let alone how it functions, particularly in relation to the separation or balance of powers doctrine, the latter which concerns the formal mandates of public actors and their interactions in relation to rule of law as a form of governance. We argue that the use of law by civic actors to advance social change should be distinguished from the use of law by states and other powerful actors to subvert the rule of law or to suppress critical voices. Thus, in distinguishing legal mobilization from lawfare, we argue that legal mobilization as a legitimate form of counterpower to lawfare has emerged as a viable and important component of governance. Pragmatically speaking, the illegitimate use of law by authoritarian regimes and corporations, the existence of corruption and both substantive and procedural limitations of formal rule of law mechanisms to deliver impartial justice have forced legal advocates to think creatively. In this paper, after conceptualizing legal mobilization and lawfare as opposing uses of law, we analyse the potential of legal mobilization as counterpower in relation to the trias politica doctrine, drawing on a case study of mobilizing Sinti, Roma and Traveller rights in The Netherlands to analyse how law is used to resist lawfare and pursue social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the limits of court-based analyses and top-down position-taking in prevailing legal mobilization scholarship, this article goes beyond the courtroom to explore the value of rights-based legal mobilization from the perspective of those engaged in the campaigns to challenge racialized water disconnection in Johannesburg (2004–9) and Detroit (2014–). Against the backdrop of the 'losing' cases of Mazibuko and Lyda , the article finds evidence in the feedback from protagonists, of the relevance of rights-based mobilization notwithstanding the judicial defeats. The value of legal mobilization ascribed by affected communities and their allies aligns with the understanding of law as a form of political power in a dialectical relationship between structure and agency (Crawford and Andreassen 2013 : 8–9). Using an expanded version of the 'power cube' (Gaventa 2006 and 2005), referred to here as the 'powerpack', the article engages in a bottom-up nuanced analysis of the multi-dimensional power of legal mobilization. In doing so, it contributes towards a deeper understanding of the transformative potential of rights-based mobilization for egalitarian socio-economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title IX has been widely recognized as a crucial step toward gender equality in America. Yet, it remains unclear how the law actually functions, particularly how it has been used in response to gender disparities in higher education. This article provides the first systematic analysis of how Title IX has been mobilized at the postsecondary level. Drawing on new data acquired through seven Freedom of Information Act requests, I analyze all resolved Title IX complaints filed with the Office for Civil Rights against four-year nonprofit colleges and universities from 1994 to 2014. I find that the mobilization of Title IX has changed both in frequency and in kind during this period. Filings started to rise after 2000 and exploded after 2009, while sexual harassment complaints nearly equaled academic and athletic filings for the first time in 2014. Private, more selective institutions as well as schools located in states with more women serving in state legislatures face a disproportionate number of complaints relative to enrollment, indicating the importance of institutional context to legal mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practitioners and scholars have argued that mobilizing the law can play a crucial role in translating human rights principles into transformative changes for rights holders. However, we have only a relatively embryonic understanding of the full range of mechanisms by which strategic legal action might lead to change and the conditions under which it is more or less likely to do so. Current thinking on how to assess legal mobilization has urged scholars and practitioners to pay increased attention to methodological issues. Our research builds on recent work to showcase the variety of mechanisms by which strategic legal action can translate into change. We seek to identify factors that social justice practitioners should consider at each stage of the litigation process to improve the likelihood of success. We draw on an in-depth case study of mobilization by young migrants in the UK whose immigration status meant they could not access student loans for higher education, thus violating their right to education. The analysis draws on a wide range of data including media analysis, organizational documents from the NGO supporting the young people and semi-structured interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses grievances filed by men in California prisons, focusing on interviews with prisoners in order to address social and psychological factors related to legal mobilization in prisons. The authors argue that prisons' connection to law encourages prisoners' likelihood to name a problem situation, and special attention is paid to prisoner's attitudes towards the behavior of correctional officers (COs) and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's (CDCR) inmate appeals system. Other topics include prisoners' self-blaming behavior and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that California prisons violated the ban on cruel and unusual punishment as specified by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.