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International audience; This article aims to explain the differential use of litigation by social movements pursuing social change. While previous studies have sought to compare non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that turn to litigation with those that do not, we study organizations that have all resorted at least once to legal action. Taking Belgium and the field of antidiscrimination as a case study, our research confirms the findings of previous literature that the characteristics of the legal environment do impact on the choice of organizations whether or not to go to court. But we also find that legal action is used differentially by NGOs depending on two factors in particular: their position as an insider or outsider in the political realm and their possession of legal resources. Based on a quantitative measure of legal actions initiated by NGOs and interviews with activists, we propose a typology of civil society organizations—which we label “experienced litigants,” “occasional litigants,” and “litigants by necessity”—that could be transposed to other contexts and other types of interest groups.

Over the years, many theories have tried to explain the puzzle of cross-national variation in preliminary reference rates before the ECJ. Most of the contributions focused on the role of national judges, examining their legal education, policy preferences, workload, and attitude towards higher courts. This article adopts, instead, a legal mobilization perspective that decentralizes the role of courts and redirects the focus to the litigants and their political context. Relying on empirical research and on a comparison of three country case studies in the field of migration, the article argues that national patterns of mobilization influence the emergence of preliminary references. Moreover, it identifies three factors at the national level that help understand when legal mobilization occurs via preliminary reference: altruism, Euro-expertise, and EU legal opportunity structure. The article makes both an empirical and a theoretical contribution by bridging the scholarship on legal mobilization and EU judicial politics.

Workers with temporary immigration status have become the economic reality in several countries, as these workers provide a temporally mobile, cheap workforce that is responsive to economic vicissitudes and anti-immigration sentiment. Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in low-wage sectors such as agriculture are tied to a single employer, have no access to their family and to permanent residence, and face overwhelming barriers in accessing justice. TFWs spend years residing and working outside of their country of nationality and are unable to be self-sovereign agents either in their countries of origin (because of lack of residence) or in their countries of sojourn (because of lack of nationality). While there have been instances where TFWs were able to make individual legal claims for labor violations in the country of sojourn, collective mobilization against the TFW program itself is exceptional. Collective mobilization represents acting as (partial) citizens, as the claims resemble self-determination claims on behalf of the entire TFW collectivity. How do TFWs and their allies, against all odds, mobilize the law to make collective claims and produce citizenship from below?In this research, I critically examine Israel and Canada, countries that have very similar TFW programs in agriculture but represent two contrasting types of legal mobilization against these programs. Israel is a case of “top-down” constitutional litigation where the results were court-ordered changes to the TFW program. Canada represents a case of legal mobilization “from below” where law is used subversively as a tool for larger political action. What explains the different pathways to legal mobilization in Israel and Canada?In addition to contributing new empirical data and theoretical conceptualizations of the different ways in which the law can be mobilized, my dissertation combines legal mobilization and social movement theories to offer an analytical framework to understand what affects the type of legal mobilization. TFW mobilization is situated in two broad social movements, labor movements and migrant rights/citizenship movements. I frame legal mobilization in the TFW context as a form of anti-hegemonic, contentious collective action and show the complex interactions between the political and discursive environment (political opportunity structure), the legal environment, and the support structure for mobilization (resource organizations).I show that despite barriers to access and courts' unwillingness to overturn immigration law, the law can be collectively mobilized on behalf of TFWs. The pathways to legal mobilization depend on legal opportunities and type of resource support. Constitutional litigation is initiated by cause-driven lawyers or legal organizations, but their framing of issues is constrained. Grassroots, solidarity organizations, in contrast, use the law as a tool for the broader goals of worker mobilization and social change. With the support of such organizations, TFWs are able to articulate their demands collectively, engage in direct action and political mobilization, and demand changes to the TFW program. My comparative historical analysis of Israel and Canada shows that legal and discursive strategies, however, depend on the historical political legacies and current political and economic environments. Elite power and ideological discourses are entrenched and distributed in the context of TFW programs. Political contestation impacts constitutional challenges as well as grassroots mobilization. My dissertation further adds to citizenship theory in three ways. First, it disrupts prevalent myths about the agency of TFWs and their lack of rights consciousness. Second, it offers the possibilities for meaningful change to TFW programs and advances an agentic theory on access to citizenship. Lastly, it adds grist to the conception of “citizenship from below” through the evidence of jurisgenerative practices of TFWs.

India’s encounter with farmers’ protests since 2015 has highlighted the constructivist attempt of grassroots movements in confronting the state’s monopoly over production of law. Farmers’ groups and civil society organisations have been mobilising legal and extra-legal tactics to gain discrete legal responses from the state towards guaranteeing farmers’ fundamental rights in the context of climate change adaptation to droughts in semi-arid parts of rural India. This paper discusses the strategies used by such actors to frame the contours of climate justice. The movement highlights the need for India’s policies to align with transformational, procedural and distributional justice goals that recognise and redress structural (socio-economic, cultural, colonial) roots of vulnerability towards just and sustainable adaptation processes. It also highlights the responsibility of the nation-state to safeguard the fundamental/constitutional rights of farmers who contribute to the nation’s food security while being the most vulnerable to climate impacts at sub-national scales. El encuentro de India con las protestas de granjeros desde 2015 ha puesto de relieve el intento constructivista de movimientos de base para enfrentarse al monopolio estatal sobre la producción de leyes. Los grupos de granjeros y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil han movilizado tácticas jurídicas y extrajurídicas para conseguir discretas respuestas jurídicas por parte del Estado en el sentido de garantizar derechos fundamentales de los granjeros en el contexto de la adaptación a las sequías en partes semiáridas de la India rural. Este artículo trata sobre las estrategias utilizadas por dichos actores para enmarcar los contornos de la justicia climática. El movimiento pone de relieve la necesidad de que las políticas de India se alineen con los objetivos de justicia transformacional, procedimental y distribucional que reconozcan y reparen de raíz vulnerabilidades estructurales (socioeconómicas, culturales, coloniales) y caminen hacia procesos de adaptación justos y sostenibles. También subraya la responsabilidad del Estado-nación para salvaguardar los derechos fundamentales/constitucionales de los granjeros que contribuyen a la seguridad alimentaria de la nación, siendo, en contraste, los más vulnerables a los efectos climáticos en escalas subnacionales. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1157

Like any other adjudicative body, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is an essentially reactive institution: it cannot create disputes on its own motion, but it needs to be ‘mobilized’. This simple observation leads us to a question of central importance in the field of courts and social justice: who brings social justice claims before the Court of Justice? This is a particularly salient question if confronted with the Court’s restrictive legal standing rules: individuals and collective actors have limited access to the Court and engaging in EU litigation requires the availability of specific resources and allies. This paper relies on an original dataset of 291 rulings of the CJEU in the field of migration, complemented with qualitative empirical research, to unveil and map the actors that defend migrant rights in Luxembourg. The analysis offers an innovative and critical reflection on the accessibility of international courts by disadvantaged groups, showing how some features of the preliminary reference procedure affect the type of actors that engage in EU litigation.

Despite vast expenditures on prison construction in the late 20th century, infrastructure has not kept pace with the dramatic growth of incarceration in the U.S. As a result, extreme prison overcrowding has led to humanitarian, legal and fiscal emergencies nationwide. These emergencies are especially pronounced at the state level, where the Great Recession most directly affected and severely curtailed public spending; today, more than a third of state prison populations exceed institutional capacity. In the present policy environment, rather than investing scarce capital on building more prisons, state-level legal reforms aimed at downsizing the prison population are widely seen as the more prudent solutions. Little is known, however, about the diffusion and implementation of prison reform laws among local criminal justice actors and their effects at the county level of practice, where the incarceration process begins for most inmates. This project examines the 2011 “Realignment” of California’s unconstitutionally overcrowded prison system as an empirical window into how legal interventions and policy innovations filter to lower levels of government and diffuse into local organizational and professional practices. Using multiple methods, the study investigates how differences in local organizational culture shape the meaning of law on the ground in ways that bolster or undermine the reform goal of decarceration. The research focuses on two questions: (1) how do local criminal justice actors respond to, comply with, shape, and resist prison downsizing laws, and (2) what effect do these responses have on decarceration as a key metric of institutional change? A combination of group-based trajectory modeling and institutional ethnographic methods are used to assess the proposition that local organizational culture mediates the implementation of prison downsizing laws and that variation in county organizational culture explains differences in the outcome of decarceration. These multiple methods enable to the study to: (1) specify the measures of local variation most salient in predicting decarceration, (2) identify processes by which local organizational culture mediates law, as well as variations in these processes across counties, and (3) relate these variations to the outcome of decarceration.

This paper examines how the LGBT Veteran organization, Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of America, has framed their advocacy for LGBT veterans’ rights, including their unique deployment of joint LGBT and military/veteran identities to strengthen their cause. Specifically, this research explores the way that the positive veteran/military identity that intersects with the less positively viewed LGBT identity facilitates both the cause and potential outcomes of their advocacy. While many social movements mobilize around a primary identity, LGBT veterans use their status as “protected veterans” to pursue rights for the LGBT community, both in the military and out. I argue that recognition of the elevated status enjoyed by military veterans is seen in the framing techniques of the LGBT veteran social movement and what I am calling “positive intersectionality”. Theories of intersectionality typically regard intersecting identities as limiting in an individual’s ability to fight discrimination, but this addendum to intersectional theory that I am proposing encompasses the full spectrum of identity, examining positive outcomes of intersectional identities rather than only negative outcomes.

Amidst disproportionate climate-related harms and inadequate responses, affected groups have turned to legal mobilization. This paper analyzes socio-ecological complexity and territorial limits as themes of enduring relevance in official responses to the Inuit Circumpolar Council’s and Maldives’ foundational legal claims that climate change violates human rights, considering these against the backdrop of evolving understanding of responsibility for climate-related harm in scientific, political, and public discourse. The claims demonstrated that when legal analysis integrates scientific and traditional knowledge, climate change can be seen as violating rights internationally, and identifiable actors as culpable. Respondents disagreed, citing the complexity of climate-related harm, which combines multiple human actors, environmental processes, probability, prediction, and extraterritorial impact. Unresolved gaps between these interpretations raise doubts about law’s relevance to growing global inequities of climate change and other processes that mix people, places, and things. Este artículo analiza la complejidad socioecológica y los límites territoriales como temas de importancia permanente en las respuestas oficiales a las reclamaciones legales fundacionales del Consejo Circumpolar Inuit y de las Maldivas, que afirman que el cambio climático viola derechos humanos. Se consideran esas respuestas sobre el trasfondo de la comprensión paulatina en el discurso científico, político y público de la responsabilidad por los daños relacionados con el clima. Las demandas demostraron que, cuando el análisis jurídico integra el saber científico y el tradicional, se puede considerar el cambio climático como violador de derechos internacionales, y a los agentes identificables como culpables. Los críticos se mostraron en desacuerdo, aludiendo a la complejidad del daño relacionado con el clima. Los vacíos sin resolver entre esas interpretaciones arrojan dudas sobre la relevancia del derecho en cuanto a crecientes desigualdades globales sobre cambio climático y otros procesos que comprenden a personas, lugares y cosas.Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1062

Time is of the essence in relation to climate change. However, there have been few studies of how time features as a frame in legal mobilization against climate change. The current article explores temporal framing in a number of high profile climate litigation cases, including Urgenda, Kivalina, Kingsnorth, and the current US Our Children’s Trust proceedings. I argue that there is a tension between a future-looking scientific framing of time and both an environmentalist policy framing of time and a present-based scientific time frame. Under future-looking scientific framing, the effects of dangerous climate change have not yet occurred and remain some way off in the ‘modelled’ future. Under an environmentalist policy time frame, action is needed immediately, now in the present, and with a present scientific time frame climate harm is already happening or is imminent. El tiempo es esencial en relación con el cambio climático. Sin embargo, se han hecho pocos estudios sobre la manera en que se designan los marcos temporales en la movilización legal contra el cambio climático. El presente artículo examina la designación de marcos temporales en una serie de casos jurídicos contra el cambio climático de gran notoriedad pública, como Urgenda, Kivalina, Kingsnorth, y los actuales procesos de Our Children's Trust en EEUU. Argumento que hay una tensión entre el marco temporal científico de cara al futuro y el marco temporal de la ciencia basada en el momento actual. Según el marco científico a largo plazo, los efectos peligrosos del cambio climático todavía no han ocurrido y quedan a cierta distancia en un futuro proyectado. Bajo el prisma de la política medioambiental, se necesita una acción inmediata, ahora, en el presente; y, de acuerdo con un marco científico actual, el daño climático ya está sucediendo o es inminente. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1063

Environmental NGOs in Spain are well known policy actors. Since the nineties some of them have been invited to participate in governmental committees and/or to provide expertise to Parliamentary committees. They have also an important role in mobilizing public opinion to defend and protect the environment. We know less though about how do they intervene in the judicial arena. In the framework of a growing role of the Courts in the field of environmental governance, the goal of this paper is to analyze to what extent Spanish NGOs resorted to the judicial arena, specifically the Supreme Court, to enforce international and European higher standards of environmental protection and advocated against wrong or inadequate praxis in the implementation of environmental regulations. Several non-judicial factors seem to have strengthened that trend in Spain: increasing environmental national and European regulation as well as the NGOs organizational capacity to make judicial claims in line with their policy preferences. Desde la década de los noventa, las ONG medioambientales de España participan en comités gubernamentales y/o como expertas en los comités parlamentarios; además de tener un papel importante en la movilización de la opinión pública. En cambio, sabemos menos sobre hasta qué punto recurren a la arena judicial. En el contexto de un creciente de papel de los tribunales en el campo de la gobernanza ambiental, el objetivo de este documento es analizar en qué medida las ONG españolas inician litigios, específicamente en el Tribunal Supremo, para exigir el cumplimiento de los estándares internacionales y europeos de protección del medio ambiente o en contra de malas praxis. Varios factores no judiciales parecen haber reforzado esa tendencia en España: el aumento de la regulación ambiental nacional y europea, así como la capacidad organizativa de las ONG para iniciar litigios en línea con su posición sobre una política determinada. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1061

Women's sexual and reproductive rights are politicized worldwide, with the most contentious right being the right to safe, legal abortion. In Latin America, where one stands on the issue of abortion has become a central identity marker; a salient issue in electoral mobilization, and a matter of coalition building and high politics. As a consequence, legalized contestation over abortion is raging across Latin America, and indeed much of the world. This article conceptualizes this as “abortion lawfare” and develops a framework for analyzing the complex dynamics and long-term, multi-sited strategies at play in the wars over abortion. The concept of lawfare – despite and, to some extent, because of its ideological uses and connotations – serves as a useful heuristic tool for grasping these dynamics, and the lawfare typology brings out the different facets of the phenomenon in terms of actors, strategies, and arenas and provides the basis for analyzing how, in any given context, actors face multiple and shifting opportunity structures. This, in turn, influences the strategies they pursue and what is achieved. Resumo Os direitos reprodutivos e sexuais das mulheres são politizados ao redor do mundo, e o direito ao aborto legal e seguro é o mais controverso. Na América Latina, o lugar que certa pessoa ocupa no debate sobre aborto se tornou um marcador central de identidade, uma questão importante na mobilização eleitoral e um elemento de construção de coalizões e de política. Como consequência, a contestação jurídica sobre aborto está ocorrendo em toda a América Latina e, na verdade, em grande parte do mundo. Este artigo conceitua isso como “abortion lawfare” e desenvolve uma abordagem para analisar a dinâmica complexa e as estratégias multilocalizadas de longo prazo em jogo nas guerras pelo aborto. O conceito de lawfare – apesar de e, em certa medida, por causa de seus usos e conotações ideológicas – serve como ferramenta heurística útil para compreender essas dinâmicas, e a tipologia de lawfare traz à tona as diferentes facetas do fenômeno em termos de atores, estratégias e arenas, além de fornecer a base para analisar como, em qualquer contexto, os atores enfrentam estruturas de oportunidades múltiplas e dinâmicas. Isso, por sua vez, influencia as estratégias que eles perseguem e os resultados que alcançam.

Este trabajo aporta evidencia empírica a la creciente literatura enfocada en la movilización legal, primero, mediante el análisis del uso del lenguaje de derechos para enmarcar demandas colectivas y, segundo, con una discusión sobre los resultados de los movimientos sociales relacionados específicamente con los marcos legales. Para hacerlo, estudio el caso del Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD), actor colectivo que consiguió la promulgación de la Ley General de Víctimas (LGV) en un contexto en el que la narrativa oficial se enfocaba en la criminalización de las víctimas de la violencia. Mediante un rastreo de proceso, analizo las razones por las cuales el MPJD enfocó sus esfuerzos en conseguir la LGV y qué factores influyeron para alcanzar tal objetivo. Los resultados indican que la LGV se concibió como un instrumento capaz de fomentar el cambio social mediante la ampliación de oportunidades legales. Al mismo tiempo, sostengo que la promulgación puede explicarse mediante la enmarcación del discurso en torno a la figura de las víctimas, la capacidad estratégica de quienes lideraron el movimiento y la estructura de oportunidades políticas. This article aims to contribute with empirical evidence to the growing literature focused on legal mobilization. First, it analyzes the use of rights language to frame collective claims; second, it discusses the outcomes of social movements specifically concerning legal frameworks. It studies the case of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which achieved the enactment of the General Law of Victims (LGV) in a context in which the official narrative focused on criminalizing victims of violence. Through process-tracing, I analyze the reasons for which the MPJD focused its efforts on getting the lgv passed and what factors influenced the achievement of that goal. The results indicate that the LGV was conceived as an instrument capable of promoting social change by expanding legal opportunities. Similarly, its enactment can be explained through the framing of discourse around the figure of the victims, the strategic capacity of the movement’s leadership and the structure of political opportunities.

El presente artículo analiza el caso de México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (MUCD), grupo de la sociedad civil que emprendió una movilización legal para cuestionar el modelo prohibicionista en materia de drogas, en tanto consideran que éste es una de las causas primordiales de la inseguridad en México. Ante la negativa de los poderes Ejecutivo y Legislativo para establecer reformas, mucd acudió al poder Judicial, en donde cuestionó de manera indirecta la política prohibicionista del Estado mexicano. Mediante el análisis de entrevistas, documentos oficiales, así como del proyecto y sentencia de la Suprema Corte, este artículo sostiene que el éxito de la movilización radicó en la construcción de una estructura de apoyo, así como en la utilización del litigio estratégico, cuyo establecimiento de alianzas entre abogados, con vínculos sociales, profesionales y de parentesco de alto perfil jugó un papel central en la obtención de un fallo favorable de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nació This article analyzes the case of Mexico United Against Crime [México Unido Contra la Delincuencia], a civil society group that undertook a legal mobilization to question the prohibitionist drug model, deeming it to be one of the main causes of insecurity in Mexico. Given the refusal of the Executive and Legislative branches to establish reforms, mucd went to the Judiciary branch, where it indirectly questioned the prohibitionist policy of the Mexican state. Through the analysis of interviews and official documents, as well as the Supreme Court project and judgment, the article maintains that the success of the mobilization was based on the construction of a support structure, as well as on the use of strategic litigation; the establishment of alliances between lawyers with high-profile social, professional and kinship ties played a central role in obtaining a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

El objetivo central de este trabajo es aportar evidencia empírica y teórica en el estudio de la movilización legal a través del análisis de un conflicto social acaecido en México, en el que una de las partes ha recurrido a diversos recursos jurídicos en conjunto con otras tácticas de movilización política y de acción directa. La metodología consistió en la aplicación de entrevistas semiestructuradas a actores clave y el análisis cualitativo de la información recabada. Este artículo estuvo guiado por dos preguntas centrales: 1) ¿por qué se recurrió a la movilización legal? y 2) ¿qué explica que hayan logrado tener éxito al obtener una resolución jurídica favorable en torno a sus demandas? Algunas conclusiones apuntan a que, si bien el uso y éxito de la movilización legal estuvo precedido por una importante estructura de apoyo interna y externa, también se encontraron otros elementos igualmente relevantes como el sentimiento de injusticia, el cual desató el proyecto, las alianzas estratégicas establecidas por los opositores, el contexto político, la conjunción de diferentes tácticas de movilización, entre otros. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of legal mobilization through the analysis of a Mexican social conflict in which various legal resources have been used together with other tactics of political mobilization and direct action. The methodology consisted of applying semi­structured interviews to key actors and the qualitative analysis of information guided by two central questions: Why did the movement turn to legal mobilization? What explains its success? Some conclusions suggest that although the use and success of legal mobilization were preceded by an important internal and external support structure, other essential elements such as the sense of injustice unleashed by the project, the strategic alliances established by the opponents, the political context and the mobilization of several tactics played as well an important role.

El presente número de Oñati Socio-legal Series es el resultado de las discusiones y los encuentros llevados a cabo en el marco del workshop titulado La sociología jurídica en América Latina y el Caribe: debates actuales y perspectivas futuras. En vista del crecimiento y la riqueza del conocimiento socio-jurídico en la región y las potencialidades que emergen de las realidades del sur global, consideramos necesario adelantar preguntas sobre el estado de arte de la sociología jurídica y las expectativas hacia el futuro. Esperamos que la agenda de trabajo que se desenvuelve en la presente contribución abone a una sociología jurídica crítica, que consolide el campo no solamente en el rigor académico que muestre la potencia de las apuestas interdisciplinarias; sino también en el compromiso social que aporte a la transformación de las sociedades latinoamericanas. This issue of Oñati Socio-legal Series is the result of the discussions and encounters from the workshop Sociology of law in Latin America and the Caribbean: current debates and future perspective. In view of the growth and potential that emerges from the global south realities, we believe it necessary to put forward questions over sociology of law’s state of the art and its expectations for the future in Latin America. We hope that the work agenda that unveils in this issue contributes to a critical sociology of law. This entails not only bringing out the academic rigour of interdisciplinary approaches; but also a social commitment with the transformation of Latin-American societies. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3267838

This dissertation uses the campaign of Colombia's Uwa indigenous people against oil extraction in their land as a case study to understand the impact of the state, the law and the market over the tactics and scale of social movements. It studies how the campaign shifted away from litigation, expanded its scale transnationally and started using the tools available in the global market economy to prevent oil exploration in the Uwa land. The dissertation suggests the need to understand social movement tactics as a complex, multidimensional phenomenon in order to capture the relation between activism and multiple institutions. Finally, it also provides a framework to understand the relation between different tactics and institutions that helps to explain the roles of economic, political, and legal factors in providing the resources and opportunities for tactical innovation and transnational activism.

The article analyses the process of legal mobilization for migrants’ rights and investigates how and with what effects, measured in terms of obtaining general policy response and ensuring implementation, legal actors and in particular civil society organizations have mobilized EU, international and domestic legislation on discrimination to promote migrants’ rights in Italy. It focuses in particular on two issues: access to employment in the public sector and access to welfare. Both issues have generated significant levels of litigation in domestic courts, with increasing involvement of civil society organizations. In relation to both, national legislation has been amended, in accordance with EU law, allowing access to employment in the public sector and extending the area of those that have the right to access to social welfare under equal conditions to categories of migrants protected under EU law. The article outlines the EU, International and domestic legislation on non-discrimination and equality for migrants, provides an overview of how litigation has been used to challenge in court the exclusion of migrants from employment in the public sector and welfare, tracks the process that brought to the reform and litigation in the aftermath highlighting the effects of litigation as a means for policy response and implementation. Discrimination, multilevel protection, migrants, welfare, employment, legal mobilization, policy response, implementation, civil society, courts.

Prepričanje, da je pravo pomembno in učinkovito sredstvo za doseganje družbenih sprememb, je postalo posebej razširjeno po dogodkih v zgodnjem obdobju druge polovice 20. stoletja, ko je po svetu prišlo do nekaterih množičnih družbenih gibanj – ker ta v marsičem niso povsem ustrezala do tedaj prevladujočemu modelu družbenih gibanj, so dobila oznako »nova« družbena gibanja. Zavoljo uveljavljanja kolektivnih interesov nova družbena gibanja pogosto presegajo klasične vzorce političnega delovanja in kot eno izmed taktik nemalokrat na nek način mobilizirajo tudi pravo. Medtem ko uporaba zakonodajnega postopka kot sredstva za doseganje družbenih sprememb predpostavlja obstoj politične volje, pa koncept strateškega pravdanja temelji na ideji, da sodne institucije predstavljajo učinkovito okolje za induciranje družbenih sprememb tudi na tistih področjih, kjer je politična volja iz različnih razlogov tradicionalno šibka. Prizadevanja za spreminjanje družbenih vzorcev prek sodne veje oblasti je vedno spremljala precejšnja mera skepse – prvič, pri tem kaj hitro pride do poseganja v sfero zakonodajne veje oblasti, in drugič, obstoji le malo prepričljivih dokazov o tem, da je takšna strategija vplivanja na družbo res učinkovita. Rešitev teh polemik pa bi lahko predstavljalo spoznanje, da se pravna mobilizacija ne odraža izključno v okviru postopkov pred formalnimi pravnimi institucijami, temveč vključuje veliko več. Nova družbena gibanja pravo pogosto dojemajo tudi kot instrument za spreminjanje pravne zavesti in pravne kulture, kar se v končni fazi lahko prek različnih mehanizmov manifestira tudi v spremembi vzorcev razmišljanja in vedenja v družbi, torej v družbeni spremembi. Following the events of the early part of the second half of the 20th century, when certain mass social movements have emerged in the world, it has become a widespread belief that law is an important and effective means of bringing about social change. As mass social movements in many respects did not fully correspond to the prevailing model of social movements of the time, they were labeled “new” social movements. For the sake of pursuing its collective interests, new social movements often the classical patterns of political activity and, as one of the tactics, often mobilize the law in some ways. While the use of the legislative process as a means of bringing about social change presupposes the existence of political will, the concept of strategic litigation is based on the idea that judicial institutions are an effective environment for initiating social change also in those areas where political will is for various reasons traditionally weak. Efforts to change social patterns through the judiciary have always been accompanied by a great deal of skepticism – first, as there is a risk of progressive courts substituting their own vision of justice for that of democratically electing law-making bodies representing the majority will, and second, as there is little convincing evidence that such a strategy for influencing society is truly effective. The solution to these controversies, however, could be the realization that legal mobilization is not exclusively reflected in proceedings before formal legal institutions, but involves much more. Namely, law is often perceived by new social movements as an instrument for changing legal consciousness and legal culture, which can ultimately manifest itself, through various mechanisms, in changing patterns of thinking and behavior in society, that is, in social change.

International audience; It has become commonplace within disability sociolegal scholarship to argue that, in the last 30 years, a new legal and policy approach to disability has emerged, leading to a paradigm shift from a social protection framework to an antidiscrimination model. Some authors have stressed, however, that the new model has not fully replaced the older social protection approach. Yet little is still known about how the coexistence of these different models impacts on the everyday experience of disability in the workplace and on potential legal mobilization. Based on interviews with workers with disabilities who mobilized the law to obtain reasonable accommodation in Belgium combined with an analysis of evolving Belgian legal schemes relating to disability, this article explores how interactions between social, labor, and antidiscrimination rights shape legal mobilization of persons with disabilities in the workplace. We find that individual's initial self‐identification as workers or persons with disabilities influences how they frame their claim and the kind of legal norms they refer to in a first stage but that both their identification and their rights consciousness evolve and change through the course of legal mobilization as they interact with various professionals and navigate between the different concepts and rights available in current law.

Based on original fieldwork, this article examines how Nubians in Egypt have mobilized to demand a return to ancestral lands along the Nile River. It begins with a historically informed analysis explaining how any attempts to make demands from the Egyptian state long have been quashed, effectively constraining any comprehensive mobilization. It thereafter argues that the emergence of several unprecedented legal and political opportunities in the past decade paved the way for substantial Nubian mobilization. This culminated in a Nubian representation in the drafting process of the 2014 Egyptian Constitution, and a subsequent constitutional reference to Nubian return. Finally, this article explores how Nubian activists have deployed competing legal and historical frames in demanding return to ancestral lands. These frames range from the right of return based on international indigenous/minority rights frameworks, to drawing parallels with the Palestinian right of return, to a less confrontational development discourse rooted in the displacement of the Nubians in the 1960s. publishedVersion

This article explores the uses of law in a restrictive and changing political environment. It focuses on the specific case of Dersim/Tunceli – a theatre of the PKK/Turkish army warfare in the 1990s – following the arrest of the PKK leader in 1999 and the lifting of emergency rule in July 2002. The paper analyzes how cause-lawyers resort to law in a period in which the state’s local ruling and control devices are transforming and in which the ‘rule of law’ has to be reinstated. While acknowledging the crucial role of the courts in shaping people’s perception of ‘the state’ as all-encompassing, the article underlines how people also come to learn ‘the state’ as multi-layered and incoherent by facing obstacles to legal action and circumventing them in this changing and uncertain period. It then discusses justice as a site of contention and argues that increasing levels of legal activism is directly contributing to the redefinition of the rule of law and, beyond that, of the conceptual borders of ‘the state’ itself.

This article contributes a critical study of efforts to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. The efforts to internationalize anticorruption enforcement are visible, for instance, in calls for an International Anticorruption Court (IACC) or an Anticorruption Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (APUNCAC). Inspired by a historical sociological perspective, this article investigates mobilizations around these initiatives, how mobilizers frame their engagement, and the ideological context in which they operate. In particular, the article zooms in on elites and how they push for states to internationalize the investigation and prosecution of corruption. This article situates the efforts of these elites in a larger historical context and compares the push to internationalize anticorruption enforcement to earlier legal mobilizations in the field of international criminal justice focused on atrocity crimes.