Strategic Human Rights Litigation

Duffy, Helen

doi:10.5040/9781509922000

Cited by 58 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Strategic litigation at IHRCs—litigation that pursues broader goals than those of the immediate parties (Duffy, 2018, p. 3)—is a key means through which NGOs can pursue their advocacy for human rights change (Hondora, 2018, p. 115). Strategic litigation at an IHRC can be a means of advancing various human rights advocacy goals, including reforming the justice system of the state, achieving justice for affected individuals or groups, shaming the state before an international forum, establishing facts, or expanding an IHRC's jurisprudence more generally (Sundstrom, 2014, pp.…”

Section: Ngo Mobilization At International Human Rights Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: Evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

Silva

Plagis

2023

Law Soc Rev

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When nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) encounter state resistance to human rights accountability, how do NGOs use international courts for their human rights advocacy strategies? Considering the overlapping phenomena of shrinking civic space within authoritarian, hybrid, and democratically backsliding regimes, and state backlash against international courts, NGOs navigate two potential levels of state backlash against human rights accountability. Building on the interdisciplinary scholarship on legal mobilization, we develop an integrated framework for explaining how states' two‐level (domestic and international) backlash tactics can both promote and deter NGOs' strategic litigation at international human rights courts (IHRCs). States' backlash tactics can influence NGOs' opportunities, capacities, and goals for their human rights advocacy, and thus affect whether and how they pursue strategic litigation at IHRCs. We elucidate the value of this framework through case studies of NGOs' litigation against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, an understudied IHRC. Drawing on an original data set, interviews, and documentation, we process‐trace how Tanzania's various backlash tactics influenced whether and how NGOs litigated at the Court. Our framework and analysis show how state backlash against human rights accountability affects NGOs' mobilization at IHRCs and, relatedly, IHRCs' opportunities for influence.

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Section: Ngo Mobilization At International Human Rights Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: Evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

Silva

Plagis

2023

Law Soc Rev

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“…In her chapter (Chapter 13), Dilek Kurban illustrates how Kurdish lawyers continued to file lawsuits against the Turkish government at the European Court of Human Rights despite the low probability of success and harsh repression for mobilizing law against the government. Filiz Kahraman (Chapter 14) also describes activists' increasing reliance on international courts to advance their claims, often in the face of their inability to make headway at the state level (Cichowski, 2011;Duffy, 2018;Keck & Sikkink, 1998;Koroteev, 2010;Kurban, 2020;Sundstrom, 2014;Sundstrom et al, 2019;van der Vet, 2018;. Drawing on research on different international human rights courts, Kahraman shows the symbiotic relationship between activist claiming and international courts.…”

Section: Beyond Strategies: Acting In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change: On "legitimate political discourse" in the global twenty-first century

Yarbrough¹,

Shdaimah²,

Boutcher³

2023

Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change

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Capitol, just visitors from across the country taking in the iconic sights with an air of menacing joy. On the House floor, they rummaged through Members' desks and play-acted in the Speaker's chair. It was here that much of the world met the "shaman." Wearing a horned hat and a shit-eating grin, he was an online influencer among followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. NORDDEUTSCHE NEUESTE NACHRICHTEN (Germany) Trump-Fans Stürmen KapitolThe convergence between these different styles of protest and different sets of protestors, if that is the word, was perhaps the most confusing element of all. Men in black, zip ties in hand, moved quietly among rowdy revelers on the House floor as they searched for elected officials to forcibly detain. The crowd's chants ranged from "Stop the Steal" to "Hang Mike Pence," and a noose on the Capitol lawn underlined the point. What emerged in the spectacle of that day was a coalition of groups united in the conviction that Donald Trump remained U.S. President, and that any means were justified in pursuit of that conviction. STRAITS TIMES (Singapore) Chinese media and netizens mock "beautiful sight" of US Capitol chaosIntertwined with the militias, white supremacists, and conspiracy theorists, that coalition included several different strands of mostly but not exclusively white conservatives. They were Christian nationalists and libertarians, rural farmers and suburban business-owners. FOREIGN POLICY The Jan. 6 Insurrectionists Aren't Who You Think They AreAnd they were police. Almost thirty off-duty officers from a dozen nationwide departments were identified as attending the pro-Trump rally that morning, and some were charged with participating in the subsequent assault. The Capitol Police suspended a half-dozen of its own officers and investigated several more for their actions that day. This overlap between law enforcement and militia movements was not new, but its implications were now bracingly clear. LE FIGARO (Paris) Démocratie fracturéeThe hard truth is that this was less an assault on legality itself than a battle between competing legalities. Despite all its violence -through all its violence -the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol was an attempt at what scholars of authoritarian legality call "rule by law," in which legal processes and institutions are used to instantiate and legitimize authoritarian rule. The assault intended to reconfigure a legal process, and its strategy was undergirded by legal

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“…Throughout Europe, we see a rise in the use of mobilisation of the law by civil society organisations (CSOs) to attain their objectives (Ramsden and Gledhill, 2019; Vanhala, 2018; Walsh, 2017). Especially on topics related to fundamental rights, such as the environment, migration and LGBTQ rights, legal mobilisation is happening with increased frequency (Duffy, 2018; Lixinski, 2021; Muñoz and Moja, 2019). High‐profile cases decided by, for example, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), do not coincidentally end up there but were the product of considerable strategic planning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

All That Glitters Is Not Gold? Civil Society Organisations and the (non‐)Mobilisation of European Union Law

Pas

2023

J of Common Market Studies

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Increasingly, collective actors in Europe, such as in the Netherlands and Italy, turn to litigation as the preferred strategy to attain their goals. Both at the national level and at the European level, civil society organisations (CSOs) are active in high‐profile cases, for example, in the field of asylum law. These CSOs operate in a different national political and legal system but do have similar European‐level opportunities. However, the extent to which European Union (EU) law is mobilised differs per CSO. This begs the following key question: Why do some CSOs mobilise EU law more frequently than others? Using empirical data, this article attempts to uncover what factors are relevant for four CSOs from Italy and the Netherlands whether to mobilise EU law or not. Most importantly, the article concludes that the framing of EU legal opportunities by the CSOs is considered to be relevant in (non‐)mobilisation of EU law.

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Strategic Human Rights Litigation

Cited by 58 publications

References 0 publications

NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: Evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: Evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change: On "legitimate political discourse" in the global twenty-first century

All That Glitters Is Not Gold? Civil Society Organisations and the (non‐)Mobilisation of European Union Law

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