Legal Mobilization for Human Rights

The traditionally top-down focus in human rights scholarship on laws, institutions, and courts has begun to turn towards a bottom-up focus on activists, advocacy groups, affected communities, and social movements. The essays collected in Legal Mobilization for Human Rights examine a range of issues including which groups claim rights, what they are mobilizing to protect, the goals they pursue, the forums they use, the obstacles they encounter, and the extent of their success or failure. Case studies reveal key themes such as: the importance of human rights to marginalized communities; how political and societal authoritarianism shapes opportunities for effective mobilization; the importance of the choice of forum for instigating change; the role intermediary actors such as NGOs play in innovating strategies to address challenges; the possibilities for subaltern mobilization to reshape human rights law; and the importance of supporting genuinely community-led legal mobilization.

Gráinne de Búrca is Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law at NYU, author of Reframing Human Rights in a Turbulent Era (OUP, 2021), and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I.CON) .

1. Introduction, Gráinne de Búrca
2. LGBTQ+ Rights Mobilization and Authoritarianism, Lynette J. Chua
3. Women, Peace and Security: A Human Rights Agenda?, Christine Chinkin
4. International NGOs and the (Non) Mobilization of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change: An Inconvenient Frame?, Rebecca Lock & Lisa Vanhala
5. Reframing Indigenous Rights: The Right to Consultation and the Rights of Nature and Future Generations in the Sarayaku Legal Mobilization, César Rodríguez-Garavito & Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz
6. Critical Legal Empowerment for Human Rights, Margaret Satterthwaite