According to Lisa Vanhala (November 2011), legal mobilization in the narrow sense can refer to high-profile litigation efforts for (or arguably against) social change, or more generally the term legal mobilization has been used to describe any type of process in which an individual or collective actor invokes legal norms, discourses or symbols to influence policy or behavior. [3] This usually means that there are guidelines or regulations around which to mobilize and a mechanism to do so. [4] Legislative activity creates an opportunity for legal mobilization. Courts become particularly relevant when applicants have means. [4] Are there common factors that determine the success or failure of legal advocacy to address various issues, such as: Climate change, ethnic profiling, discrimination against older adults, gender-based violence, and other social justice issues? Every dimension of progressive criticism – application, counter-mobilization and co-optation – poses a serious challenge to the effectiveness of law as a tool for social change. Yet progressive criticism has generally ignored the transsubstantial nature of the efficiency problem – that is, it has ignored the fact that there are significant obstacles to the enforcement of rules arising from the action of social movements, regardless of where rule changes take place. This does not mean that all changes to the rules face identical enforcement issues. The effectiveness of the different levers of reform depends on the context. One of the main conclusions of this book, however, is that litigation is not unique in its inability to achieve sustainable reform of complex systems dominated by powerful actors. On the contrary, an important lesson is that any policy change designed to benefit marginalized groups – whether through laws, regulations or treaties – regularly stumbles at the implementation level, given the complexity of regulatory systems and the strength of opponents` instruments of resistance. In the struggle for redistributive reforms, enforcement gaps are the rule, not the exception.
What role – and should – lawyers play in promoting progressive social change? While this is an issue that has dominated progressive legal thought since the civil rights era, it is a critical moment to rethink it, framed by the two democratic challenges of the Trump era: the social insurgency that challenges structural inequalities, alongside vigorous attacks on democratic institutions to undermine political controls and the fundamental principles of free and fair elections. Both challenges have roots outside the law, but fundamentally involve the future of law: on the one hand, the requirement that the law live up to its promise to ensure equality and inclusion, and on the other hand, it protects against efforts to dismantle legal systems that save society from the abyss of white supremacy, religious intolerance and authoritarianism. Ultimately, the assessment of legal mobilization ultimately revolves around the meaning of « success, » a controversial idea that evolves over time in response to events. While substantial results are of great importance, the process by which these results are achieved is also crucial. Having a voice in the movement`s decision-making is fundamental to the legitimacy of the decisions themselves – and in long-term cycles of social change, legitimacy is key to maintaining engagement and adapting to setbacks. Reflecting on the ups and downs of the Los Angeles movement for economic justice over the course of a monumental two-decade arc of struggles challenges the notion of success and failure as useful concepts, instead emphasizing the value of more limited and fine-grained analyses of how law and politics interact for better or worse at specific times. What looks like a failure at one moment becomes a success at another – and vice versa. This book sheds light on how lawyers respond to this dynamic: as facts that need to be studied, understood, planned, and (if things don`t go as planned) revised. Instead of viewing success as the advancement of political change that represents a decisive victory, the movement`s advocates recognize that struggle is a never-ending process in which victories must be defended and expanded over time. Jeff Handmaker participated in « Legal mobilization, cause lawyering and crimmigration law », conference on the irregular migration mantra, webinar organized by Border Criminologies Oxford University, Friday, 25 Feb.
2022, 16:30 – 18:00 Debates on the role and power of law, legal actors and legal institutions in movements for social change and in politics in general are conducted, as long as political science is a discipline. One of the main areas of research in the literature on the role of « legal things » in political systems and society concerns legal mobilization. The term embodies a controversial academic terrain, as there is no clearly defined or universally accepted meaning. One of the oldest and most frequently quoted formulations in the political science literature is: « The law is. when a desire or need translates into a demand as the affirmation of one`s own rights » (cf. Zemans 1983, cited in Early Works, p. 700). In its narrowest applications, the term refers to high-profile process efforts for (or arguably against) social change. In a broader sense, it has been used to describe any type of process in which individual or collective actors invoke legal norms, discourses or symbols to influence politics, culture or behaviour. Research on legal mobilization tended to be divided into two axes: individual quarrels and group campaigns for social reform. In the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, there was a general tendency for political scientists to focus on legal advocacy by group actors, while anthropologists and sociologists, particularly those who embraced interpretive change in the 1980s, focused on the micropolitics of disputes between individuals. However, this changed in the early 21st century with a growing interdisciplinary commitment to theory, methodology and epistemology.
Until the early 21st century, the literature on legal mobilization has largely focused on the United States and the implicit (or explicit) assumptions of domestic legal exceptionalism: the belief that the American legal and regulatory style and heightened legal awareness are unprecedented anywhere else in the world. In the first two decades of the 21st century. In the nineteenth century, there was a sharp increase in research to mobilize law beyond the United States, with a growing interest in the ideas that comparative work can generate, as well as research on legal mobilization in authoritarian or hard-to-study environments. There is also a growing interest in transnational and international legal mobilization. This flowering of work has stimulated the hypotheses of the American experience and thus improved our theoretical and empirical understanding of mobilization in different contexts. Legal mobilisation should be a legitimate means of resolving conflicts, addressing deficiencies in the rule of law and justice, and resolving other governance issues. Legal mobilization is not the same as lawfare, in which corporations and governments exploit the law in some sort of dubious legitimacy. While lawfare is used to intimidate, attempt to bankrupt or harm advocates, organizations and even government agencies for social justice, organizations and even government agencies or social justice, legal mobilization can serve as a form of resistance or counter-power. J.D. Handmaker & T.
Matthews (2019) « Analysis of the potential for legal mobilization to ensure equal access to socio-economic justice in South Africa » Development Southern Africa, 36 (6), 889-904. One of the most influential works of lawyers in the movement`s campaigns is the development of new legal theories and their mobilization in strategic discussions and political processes to facilitate their implementation.