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The essays in this book reveal key themes of mobilization in human rights law through case studies, and discuss topics such as 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.

THE AUTHORS EXAMINE COURT USAGE IN SPAIN BETWEEN 1960 AND 1980. DURING THIS PERIOD SPAIN EXPERIENCED RAPID ECONOMIC GROWTH WITH ITS ATTENDANT SOCIAL CHANGE AND DRAMATIC POLITICAL TRANSITION FROM AUTHORITARIANISM TO DEMOCRACY. BOTH THE MOVEMENT TOWARD DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ARE FOUND TO BE POSITIVELY LINKED TO INCREASES IN LEGAL MOBILIZATION.

While it has been frequently asserted that the use of courts is responsive to political and social contexts, the evidence is inconclusive at best. In the case of political context the dearth of evidence may reflect focusing on the U.S. case, where there is relatively limited variation in relevant characteristics. In the case of social context it may reflect a failure to focus on periods of substantial transition. In the present study we examine court usage in Spain between 1960 and 1980. During this period Spain experienced rapid economic growth with its attendant social change and dramatic political transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Both the movement toward democracy and social development are found to be positively linked to increases in legal mobilization.

How and when do people participate in sustained collective action via the courts? Previous research highlights group identity or resources and political opportunities but overlooks civil procedural rules' effects beyond the courtroom. This article explores how rules regarding privacy shape individuals' decisions about sustained participation. Fears of exposing one's identity deter participation, especially in the context of public trials. Yet, a paired comparison of litigation by victims of hepatitis C-tainted blood products in Japan and Korea reveals that court-supervised privacy protections, which were available in Japan but not in Korea, facilitate plaintiffs' participation inside and outside the courtroom. They ease plaintiff recruitment and enhance claimants' credibility. Counterintuitively, they also let claimants strategically shed pseudonymity to send a costly signal about their commitment to the cause. Theorizing "pseudonymous participation" as an understudied mode of activism between full exposure and anonymity demonstrates that seemingly technical aspects of law have significant political consequences.

<span class="fontstyle0">El propósito de este texto ha sido proporcionar al lector una cartografía teórica mínima sobre el enfoque de la movilización legal en el estudio de los movimientos sociales, que contribuya a una mejor y más fructífera navegación a través de los estudios de caso presentados en este </span><em><span class="fontstyle2">dossier</span></em><span class="fontstyle0">.</span> <br /><br />

The process of litigation is part of the decentered complex governance structure of risks and disaster. The process highlights problems that other institutions deflect. Courts are also part of defining problems in governing disaster. Scholarship drawing on legal decisions, including concerning environmental decision making, often relies upon the final decision from a highest court of appeal. Most cases settle, and courts make temporary decisions that other courts subsequently overturn or vacate. This process also names and deflects problems. Therefore, looking only to highest courts of appeals misstates how courts participate in governance. However, the process of litigating in lower courts is complex to follow, with partial decisions and settlements. This paper traces the histories of key housing assistance cases taken after Hurricane Katrina, following their multiple iterations as well as how later cases drew upon them, through 2018. Although initial decisions evinced concern for those who had lost their homes, flexible legal standards and limits on groups' ability to litigate allowed courts to limit government agencies' accountability in court. This paper argues for integrating courts into the governance of risks and hazards, and for following trial courts and process.

"This book examines the Colombian experiment with robust rights protections and traces how those rights came to be meaningful in citizens' everyday lives, allowing them to claim access to goods like healthcare. It develops a novel approach to legal mobilization that is both relational and interactive"--

"This book examines the Colombian experiment with robust rights protections and traces how those rights came to be meaningful in citizens' everyday lives, allowing them to claim access to goods like healthcare. It develops a novel approach to legal mobilization that is both relational and interactive"--

Abstract
This article examines how EU rights and laws serve as legal opportunity structures for women's rights activists in Europe. Further, it examines what effects this transnational activism has on the permanence and inclusion of public interests and gender equality in EU legal and political processes. The analysis examines the legal domain of EU women's rights over a thirty-year period. Methodologically, the study relies on case law analysis, primary document collections, and interviews with non-governmental organizations and governmental elites at both the EU and the national level. I ask how legal mobilization can serve as a catalyst for institutional change (by influencing litigation and legislative action), and how this effects subsequent EU-level women's rights mobilization and public inclusion.

In The Social Constitution, Whitney Taylor examines the conditions under which new constitutional rights become meaningful and institutionalized. Taylor introduces the concept of 'embedding' constitutional law to clarify how particular visions of law come to take root both socially and legally. Constitutional embedding can occur through legal mobilization, as citizens understand the law in their own way and make legal claims - or choose not to - on the basis of that understanding, and as judges decide whether and how to respond to legal claims. These interactions ultimately construct the content and strength of the constitutional order. Taylor draws on more than a year of fieldwork across Colombia and multiple sources of data, including semi-structured interviews, original surveys, legal documents, and participation observation. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the most active international court. After decades with few allegations of human rights abuses, the ECHR docket expanded in the 1990s. Paradoxically, long‐standing democracies can have standardized violation rates of the prohibition against torture that compare to transitional democracies that struggle to protect rights. Yet it is implausible that human rights abuses increased or that established democracies engage in more torture than new democracies. Instead variations in legal mobilization generate the surge and puzzling distribution of European judgments. I argue that discrepancies between the incidence of torture and litigation reflect variations in support structures, where declared violations can reflect the level of support that individuals receive in pursuing claims rather than the incidence of torture. This dynamic is most pronounced for foreign nationals, who typically possess fewer resources than citizens to access legal institutions and encounter popular and official hostility. As a result, much European litigation concerning torture in long‐standing democracies is transnational in character.

The climate change countermovement (CCCM) deploys a broad repertoire of tactics in its effort to cast doubt on the science of climate change. One important yet understudied tactic is the effort by CCCM groups to use open records laws in scientifically uncertain areas to cast doubt on the accuracy of scientific information. This article explores the use of this tactic by CCCM groups and adds to the legal mobilization literature in three ways. First, it traces the origin of CCCM groups to the broader conservative legal movement of the 1970s that challenged the dominance of the liberal legal network. Second, it shows how CCCM groups waged an open records campaign against climate scientists in Virginia and Arizona, causing scientists to countermobilize by organizing their own legal campaigns. Finally, this article provides the first empirical evidence of the effect of CCCM Freedom of Information Act suits on the activities of university researchers. I find, through in‐depth personal interviews with twelve university researchers, that the experience of researchers who have been exposed to open records campaigns has been overwhelmingly negative, has caused them to change their methods of communication, and has imposed a new work burden that draws them away from other work responsibilities. I argue that the costs of these tactics are narrowly borne by a concentrated group of scientists whose production of knowledge is a public good that allows us to address the crosscutting and relentless problem of climate change.