Movement Law Lab Blog

Dispatches, insights, and strategies for the movements shaping our future. Movement Law Lab shares timely analysis on democracy, legal advocacy, and the tools organizers need to protect social movements, resist authoritarianism, and build toward collective liberation.

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We at the Movement Law Lab (MLL) are lawyers troubled by the threat of rising authoritarianism and the capture of US legal institutions.  We believe the law can be leveraged to intervene in and interrupt the erosion of our democracy — but it will require a massive transformation of our sector and a new power-building commitment to bolster, defend and embolden social movement organizers. These “Democracy Dispatches” are an agitation to the legal sector to fulfill our role in fighting for a multiracial, pluralistic democracy.

Over the course of this series, we hope to make meaning of the current moment and help both lawyers and organizers understand the gravity of what is at stake when democracy erodes.  We’ll offer encouragement for how lawyers in every sector can become protagonists in the pro-democracy movement.  We’ll also lift up examples of lawyers and legal institutions who are moving beyond winning cases to building collective power. 

MLL Blog
Calling All Lawyers to Fight for Multiracial Democracy
Dispatches on Democracy
Calling All Lawyers to Fight for Multiracial Democracy
Dispatches on Democracy

We are inviting you to bravely step into an arc of work upon which all of our other work depends. At a minimum, each of us must deepen the connections between the work we’re already doing and the collective task of defending, building. and strengthening a multiracial democracy.

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Dispatches on Democracy
What Organizers Need from Lawyers, Part 1: Help Block Authoritarians
Dispatches on Democracy
What Organizers Need from Lawyers, Part 1: Help Block Authoritarians
Dispatches on Democracy

Lawyers must be prepared to help defend the terrain on which we organize, stop the criminalization of protest, and help build ecosystem-wide approaches to safety and security.

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Dispatches on Democracy
What Organizers Need from Lawyers, Part 2: Help Build Deep Democracy
Dispatches on Democracy
What Organizers Need from Lawyers, Part 2: Help Build Deep Democracy
Dispatches on Democracy

While keeping people safe and fighting for immediate material wins, we must also be steadfastly committed to the project of creating long-term governing power. Ultimately, lawyers are needed to dream and plan alongside organizers as strategists.

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Dispatches on Democracy
What Propels the Global Authoritarian Surge and How We Can Fight Back
Dispatches on Democracy
What Propels the Global Authoritarian Surge and How We Can Fight Back
Dispatches on Democracy

Any issue that lawyers hope to advance–no matter how local–is bound up with the worldwide rise of authoritarianism. We need to better understand the threat so that we can play our part in a pro-democratic front to both thwart authoritarian power grabs and build a better future.

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Dispatches on Democracy
Brief History of the Takeover of the US Judiciary
Dispatches on Democracy
Brief History of the Takeover of the US Judiciary
Dispatches on Democracy

The history of the authoritarian campaign to seize the courts reveals how closely the electoral and judicial arenas are linked, and how politics shapes the interpretation of the law. The structural changes that the authoritarian actors have put into place are going to take decades to address, not only through Congressional action but also through informed action on the part of people.

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Dispatches on Democracy

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