Legal mobilisation as a lens for law and development studies

Description

Law and development scholarship involves more than just the study of norms and implementing institutions structuring development. Law is interactional; regarded both as a process and an outcome, and mobilized strategically by states, by corporations and by civic actors to try and accomplish structural change, either positively or negatively. Hence, legal mobilization, also referred to as a non-reductionist form of legal instrumentalism (Taekema), can be a useful analytical lens to explain law’s relevance to development interventions, and in particular rule of law interventions. There is an expansive literature on legal mobilization (Abel, McCann, Merry, King, Vanhala, Dugard). In my research on legal mobilisation, I analyse the capacity, structural limitations and transformative potential for strategic legal mobilisation (disparagingly referred to by neoliberal and neoconservative detractors as ‘lawfare’), to lead to structural change, both in terms of its normative and functional dimensions. This may involve working together with government to find a legal solution to a complex social, economic or political problem. It may also involve seeking to hold governments and their agents accountable to their human rights obligations. Other colleagues conducting research on legal mobilisation also relate the functioning and normativity of law to broader social, economic and political processes, some of which will be explored during the course of this symposium.

Period	2 Nov 2015
Event title	ISS-IDLO Symposium: Current research on legal mobilisation
Event type	Other
Location	International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University RotterdamShow on map