This article investigates litigation in the field of EU market liberalisation from the perspective of legal mobilisation research. It follows the assertion that litigation has seized on asymmetries... Show moreThis article investigates litigation in the field of EU market liberalisation from the perspective of legal mobilisation research. It follows the assertion that litigation has seized on asymmetries in EU law to threaten cornerstones of national industrial relations regimes. The article investigates litigants and their legal counsel in 14 seminal cases. It identifies three distinct types of litigants: narrowly self-interested ‘one-shotters’, organised interests as ‘repeat players’, and ‘cause lawyers’. Key take-aways add to the literatures on both liberalisation and legal mobilisation. The prominence of purposeful, strategic action speaks against previous assertions of a purely self-sustaining logic of market liberalisation, and efforts by trade unions to reinforce national regulations protecting labour speak against the assumption that EU law is only employed by those seeking greater factor mobility. On the other hand, attention to litigants seeking market liberalisation calls into question the notion of law as a ‘weapon of the weak’ often pursued in legal mobilisation research. Show less
When nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) encounter state resistance to human rights accountability, how do NGOs use international courts for their human rights advocacy strategies? Considering the... Show moreWhen nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) encounter state resistance to human rights accountability, how do NGOs use international courts for their human rights advocacy strategies? Considering the overlapping phenomena of shrinking civic space within authoritarian, hybrid, and democratically backsliding regimes, and state backlash against international courts, NGOs navigate two potential levels of state backlash against human rights accountability. Building on the interdisciplinary scholarship on legal mobilization, we develop an integrated framework for explaining how states' two-level (domestic and international) backlash tactics can both promote and deter NGOs' strategic litigation at international human rights courts (IHRCs). States' backlash tactics can influence NGOs' opportunities, capacities, and goals for their human rights advocacy, and thus affect whether and how they pursue strategic litigation at IHRCs. We elucidate the value of this framework through case studies of NGOs' litigation against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, an understudied IHRC. Drawing on an original data set, interviews, and documentation, we process-trace how Tanzania's various backlash tactics influenced whether and how NGOs litigated at the Court. Our framework and analysis show how state backlash against human rights accountability affects NGOs' mobilization at IHRCs and, relatedly, IHRCs' opportunities for influence. Show less
