International Institute of Social Studies
International Institute of Social Studies

Legal Mobilization: Analyzing law-based advocacy

Analyzing the strategic potential and challenges of legal mobilization

  • How can civic actors and well-meaning regulatory agencies strategically work together, mobilizing law to ensure accountability for human rights, environmental and other violations, across different issues and political contexts? 

  • Are there common factors that determine the success or failure of legal mobilization to address different issues, such as: climate change, ethnic profiling, elder discrimination, gender-based violence and other social justice issues?

Law promises certainty, but law is also static. In order to bring about or support societal change through law, something needs to happen. Human rights and protection of the environment in particular do not realize themselves. These are contested, and most especially, the law must be mobilized.

Composition 8 huile sur toile - Vassily Kandinsky 1923
International law, like politics and society, may be fragmented, but also has a structure*

Among the many scholars who have influenced us are Richard Abel (1994), who has explained how law has been wielded as a sword and shield in different forms of legitimate politics by other means.

Like Makau Mutua (2016), who has been one of the main figures in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement, we also regard a critical approach to legal mobilization as key. Moreover, the pioneering research of the late (2020) legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry has provided a framework to explain how human rights are translated in locally-relevant settings.

Furthermore Lisa Vanhala’s research on legal mobilization has explained the key roles and justifications of social movements in mobilizing the law to address environmental harm, promote disability rights and other issues.

As scholars, we critically analyze the strategic potential and challenges of legal mobilization through a generalizable, analytical lens of legal mobilization. This enables us to study different forms of legal and rights-based civic advocacy in comparative perspective.

Legal mobilization compels us to adopt a grounded understanding and critical relationship between law and other fields and disciplines. Through the interdisciplinary field of socio-legal studies, we incorporate a critical approach to analyzing public policy and implementation and the consequences of corporate behaviour.

Why is this research relevant?

As a practice, legal mobilization is aimed at advancing social justice. Thus, it is of significant societal relevance, for example to advocacy organizations who want to better understand the strategic value of mobilizing law. One of our partners, Greenpeace, characterizes this in their contemporary work to mitigate climate change and other environmental harms as using law as a sword, shield and armour.

Legal mobilization is intended to function as a legitimate means to resolve conflicts, redress rule of law and justice deficits and address other governance problems.

Outputs

Collaborations

Funding

Earlier funding to ISS research on Legal Mobilization came through our role in a Research Excellence Initiative. Called Integrating Normative and Functional Approaches to the Rule of Law and Human Rights (INFAR), this Project ran from 2015 – 2020 in cooperation with researchers at the Erasmus School of Law (and principally Sanne Taekema) with ISS researchers, including Karin Arts and Jeff Handmaker.

The award allowed us to engage two postdoctoral researchers, Nathanael Ali and Kinnari Bhatt, as well as visiting professors (Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University, Jan Klabbers of Helsinki University and Jonathan Klaaren of the University of the Witwatersrand) and supported several conferences and expert meetings. Our research strategy within INFAR was:

  • To trace the shifts between the functional and normative approaches historically in order to uncover the basic assumptions of the approaches;
  • To provide a theoretical framework for integrating the two perspectives in a transnational context;
  • To link regulatory and legal studies to show how both approaches can be connected in regulatory policy and court practice; and
  • To ensure knowledge transfer and synergies by organizing events that bring together organizations and individuals who work as policy makers and legal practitioners as well as academics from different disciplines.

Key Funders

  • Erasmus Trust Fund: 2015-2020, Research Excellence Initiative led by Professor Sanne Taekema, in which various ISS researchers have participated.
  • ISS, Erasmus School of Economics and KidsRights: 2012-2022, coverage of all expenses involved in producing and publishing the annual KidsRights Index. 
  • European Commission: 2019, Erasmus + programme, substantial grant to support staff and student mobilities during the course of 2020 - 2022.
  • NIAS-KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences): 2021, Teaching replacement grants for Misiedjan and Handmaker.
  • Leiden University: 2021, The Van Vollenhoven Institute runs an MSc in Law and Society in which the ISS have been closely involved, both in supporting Leiden obtain accreditation, and through (compensated) teaching contributions, in particular an elective in Mobilizing Rights and Social Justice.

Contact

Duck-Rabbit illusion - the mind's eye1892
Email address
handmaker@iss.nl

For more information, please contact the project leader, Dr Jeff Handmaker.

'To persist in asking the question "but is the jurist or the politician right?" is like asking whether the image really is that of a (Wittgenstein) rabbit or a duck. All depends on the background assumptions against which we examine the image, the vocabulary through which we try to grasp its meaning.' From: M. Koskenniemi in Mobilising International Law for 'Global Justice' (2019:27).

Other relevant content

* Reference to Kandinsky’s Composition VIII (1923) is inspired by the work of Koskenniemi, and other critical legal scholars, including those applying Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). These scholars argue that international law, like politics and society, may be fragmented, but also has a structure. For legal mobilization scholars, the institutional biases contained in this structure and the historical context in which they were framed, are strategically important to understand. 

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