Strategies of Influence and Persuasion in Legal Networks

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Title: Strategies of Influence and Persuasion in Legal Networks Abstract: Numerous participants are involved in the process of interpreting and shaping human rights law, including judges, court staff lawyers, policymakers, and advocacy organizations. By analyzing strategies of influence and dialogue that shape human rights law, this project will show how judgements at a human rights court are just one point in a larger process of influence and communication among several legal actors. Showing how legal decisions emerge through interactions among these different legal actors offers important information with respect to human rights law. This project will focus on how the social interactions across a diverse network of legal actors shape the influence of the European Court of Human Rights, which draws together judges from 47 Council of Europe countries, hundreds of registry lawyers, and tens of thousands of individual applicants. The project will track strategies and concepts that these legal actors use to influence each other in processing applications, litigating cases, and delivering and executing judgements. In a mixed-methods study, the project will include interviews, participant observation, interactive mapping, and analysis of legal texts and judgements to analyze the mechanisms of language framing and circulation through which legal concepts become authoritative. By researching how social actors influence the scope and direction of international law while maintaining the integrity of domestic legal commitments, the project's findings will offer insight within a comparative legal framework of human rights law. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.