Doctoral Dissertation Research in Law and Social Sciences: Breaking the Wall of Impunity? Strategic Litigation and Human Rights in Mexico and Colombia

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

In democracies struggling with violence and the rule of law, when is legal mobilization effective in encouraging the state to take judicial responsibility for harming its own people? This project will analyze how victims of serious, state-perpetrated human rights abuses (extra-judicial killing, torture and disappearance) collaborate with NGOs in pursuit of justice, and when and why they succeed. It will measure the influence of strategic litigation (domestic litigation used together with NGO-organized protests, lobbying, media campaigns, high-level meetings, international solidarity networks, and international litigation) on domestic judicial outcomes and litigants' ongoing safety. It posits that with strong strategic litigation, victims are more likely to achieve justice and improve their safety. By comparing human rights cases in Mexico and Colombia, this study will explore how factors like judicial autonomy, citizen faith and participation in the judicial system, and the domestic situating of international law affect the success of these strategies. By using both quantitative regression and paired case studies, it will interrogate the relationship between mobilization, justice and safety. Analyzing the efficacy of the rule of law from the bottom up will provide a balance for scholarship that has approached questions of rule of law from a top-down, often state-centered understanding of courts and law. The data on judicial outcomes in lower courts, citizen mobilization and victim security will add to the burgeoning legal mobilization scholarship on international outcomes. Beyond these scholarly contributions, the project seeks to provide victims and their NGO advocates with analysis of the efficacy of their mobilization activities. Further, it seeks to inform the policymaking community about levels of state impunity, and may suggest the need for reform: if victims with access to advocacy resources receive more justice, this suggests the need to ensure all victims have a means of redressing the resource imbalance that they confront when accusing the state of violating its own laws.