In this timely book Jeff Handmaker critically reflects on the opportunities and challenges of law-based advocacy. Exploring different functions of law through an analytical concept and approach of legal mobilization, this book provides a unique reflection on how law can address systemic crises.
Legal Mobilization discusses the strategic potential of law-based, civic-led advocacy and surveys how legal mobilization can serve as a form of counterpower to state and corporate-led lawfare. Using mixed methodologies, drawing on personal experience and sometimes in conversation with Sanele Sibanda and Sanne Taekema, Handmaker covers a variety of pressing international issues such as the struggle for migrants’ rights in the Netherlands and the global push for Palestinian rights, as well as legal battles in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book also examines ‘lawfare blowback’, the hegemonic use of law by governments, companies and other non-governmental actors seeking to disrupt the efforts of advocates.
This is an essential resource for students and academics across the fields of law and development, law and society, migration studies, constitutional(ism) and administrative law, public policy and human rights. It is also an enlightening read for legal professionals and NGO practitioners, and in particular those working on migrant advocacy, Palestinian rights and racialized inequalities more generally.
Arvustused
This is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand how law can be effectively deployed as a form of counterpower in the fight for justice. Handmaker and colleagues not only break new theoretical ground in distinguishing legal mobilisation from lawfare, they provide rich case studies that illuminate what is at stake in a world increasingly hostile to fundamental rights and democratic values, providing crucial lessons for how resistance movements can use law to overcome backlash and win sustainable change. This book could not be more urgent and timely. -- Scott Cummings, School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Through thoughtful engagement with legal mobilization theory and practice, this book provides a timely and compelling contribution to understanding the differences in form and effect of the use of law as counter-power (to advance equity and justice) and as status-quo power (to protect corporate and entrenched interests). -- Jackie Dugard, Columbia University, USA
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: the potential and limits of legal mobilization
2 Legal mobilization as an analytical approach and the importance
of counterpower
3 Challenging Dutch lawfare towards migrants through legal
mobilization
4 A human face to end impunity: boycott, divestment and
sanctions as legal mobilization
5 Legal mobilization responses to Covid-19 and the need for a
critical lens
6 Countering the lawfare blowback: legal mobilization defenders
for Palestine
7 Conclusion: towards legal learning
Afterword
List of references
Jeff Handmaker, Associate Professor of Legal Sociology, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Visiting Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
