Legal Struggles: A Social Theory Perspective on Strategic Litigation and Legal Mobilisation

Social movements, NGOs and other political actors often mobilise the law for social change. Strategic litigation and collective legal mobilisation can be key instruments to face current political challenges like the climate crisis, human rights violations against refugees or the exploitation of workers along global supply chains. Although these struggles are framed by a societal context and have impacts on the political and juridical fields, the literature about legal mobilisation still does not decidedly engage with a social-theory-based perspective on such struggles. By developing the concept of legal struggles, the article proposes a conceptual framework to analyse both the ambivalence and the emancipatory potential of progressive struggles in the juridical field. Critical Theory, Materialist Theory and the Theory of Social Fields by Pierre Bourdieu are combined to investigate the specific form of collective legal struggles carried out in this arena. We examine repertoires and strategies of collective actors as well as the emancipatory potential of these mobilisation strategies. Our conclusions point to the structural distinctions and selectivities which define the juridical field in capitalist societies and also the conditions of possibility of political struggles using the law.