The European Court of Human Rights, Amicus Curiae, and Violence against Women

Cichowski, Rachel A.

doi:10.1111/lasr.12236

Cited by 42 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…The ECtHR is an important avenue for Russian NGOs to seek accountability for violations of human rights under the Convention. NGOs are increasingly involved in legal mobilization before the ECtHR, either by lodging strategic complaints or by submitting amicus curiae (Cichowski ; Hodson ). In a perfect world, winning a case before the European Court would spur domestic legal reform, amend law enforcement practices, or find recourse for a group of victims.…”

Section: “A Story Of Too High Expectations”: International Legal Mobimentioning

confidence: 99%

“When They Come for You”: Legal Mobilization in New Authoritarian Russia

Vet¹

2018

Law Soc Rev

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As of 2012, the Russian State Duma passed a string of repressive laws on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), surveillance, and high treason. Under this “new authoritarian” regime, a growing number of Russians are investigated by the security services or put on trial for high treason. NGOs face selective prosecution and surprise inspections. While we know how lawyers use legal mobilization in democratic regimes where they can expect courts to be fair, legal mobilization remains understudied in regimes moving toward authoritarianism, where authorities pass repressive laws but enforce them erratically. Drawing on interviews with Russian lawyers, this article examines how lawyers represent two victim groups of state coercion: Russians under investigation for treason and prosecuted human rights NGOs. By examining how lawyers make strategic choices while coping with unfair courts, the random enforcement of laws, and shrinking resources, this article argues that state coercion does not deter lawyers from legal mobilization at domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. Instead, repressive laws push lawyers to reinvent their everyday practices to counter repressive legislation and conviction bias in the criminal justice system.

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Section: “A Story Of Too High Expectations”: International Legal Mobimentioning

confidence: 99%

“When They Come for You”: Legal Mobilization in New Authoritarian Russia

Vet¹

2018

Law Soc Rev

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“…understand that some issue areas are particularly controversial, pin-pointing which cases will provoke the most controversy can prove challenging. The ECtHR only infrequently receives third-party submissions that could signal the potential for controversy (Cichowski, 2016). The Court may not have predicted that ruling on prisoner voting rights in the United Kingdom or crucifixes in Italian schools would provoke the amount of controversy that these judgments did.…”

Section: Institutional Responsiveness To Liberal Backlashmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights

Stiansen

Voeten

2020

International Studies Quarterly

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How does backlash from consolidated democracies affect the behavior of liberal international institutions? We argue that liberal international institutions have incentives to appease their democratic critics. Liberal institutions rely on democratic support for their continued effectiveness and can accommodate democratic critics at a lower legitimacy cost than non-democratic challengers. We examine this theory in the context of the European Court of Human Rights using a new dataset of rulings until 2019 and a coding of government positions during multiple reform conferences. Combining matching and a difference-in-differences design, we find strong evidence that the Court exercises restraint towards consolidated democracies that have criticized the Court in multilateral reform conferences by rendering fewer violation judgments against these states. We find some evidence that governments have also recently appointed more deferential judges. The findings suggest that backlash can affect liberal international institutions even without membership exit.

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“…This outcome, however, hinges on Eurolawyers not being “passive actors simply responding to externally‐imposed legal opportunities but instead play[ing] a role in creating their own legal opportunities” (Vanhala : 525). Drawing on studies of legal mobilization (e.g., McCann ; Vanhala , ; Conant ; Conant et al ; Cichowski , ; Kelemen , ), we can theorize why lawyers may be particularly effective at leveraging EU law to broker social change. As prototypical “repeat players” (Galanter 1974) in the European legal field (Vauchez and De Witte ), Eurolawyers' “greater legal expertise and experience in transnational activism” (Cichowski : 895) enables them to venue shop by “shifting their efforts up to the transnational (i.e.…”

Section: Contentious Politics and The Unmasking Of Transnational Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Marx to Market: Lawyers, European Law, and the Contentious Transformation of the Port of Genoa

Pavone¹

2019

Law Soc Rev

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What happens when international courts are asked to tackle local political controversies and their judgments subsequently spark contentious resistance? In the European Union (EU), scholars have posited that the politicization of the often‐liberalizing rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) provokes Euroscepticism and noncompliance. In contrast, I argue that contentious politics may also produce permissive conditions for activist “Eurolawyers” to promote awareness of EU law and mobilize support for liberalization. To unpack this claim, I conduct an intensive case study of perhaps the most explosive controversy in Italy to generate litigation before the ECJ: The 1991 “Port of Genoa” case, where the public monopoly rights of a centuries‐old dockworkers' union were challenged. Leveraging interviews, court and newspaper records, public opinion data, and litigation statistics, I trace how—despite dockworkers' vigorous resistance—a pair of entrepreneurial lawyers liberalized Italy's largest port by combining strategic litigation with a public relations campaign to mobilize a compliance constituency. I conclude with insights the case study offers into the contemporary politics of transnational governance.

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The European Court of Human Rights, Amicus Curiae, and Violence against Women

Cited by 42 publications

References 54 publications

“When They Come for You”: Legal Mobilization in New Authoritarian Russia

“When They Come for You”: Legal Mobilization in New Authoritarian Russia

Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights

From Marx to Market: Lawyers, European Law, and the Contentious Transformation of the Port of Genoa

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