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.
Recent
Movement Lawyering in Times of Rising Authoritarianism
In July of 2024, we gathered practicing lawyers, academics, and activists in Rio de Janeiro to discuss how movement lawyers in different global contexts have used law to support social movements in the face of repressive or authoritarian regimes.
Tunisia: A Case Study in Democratic Backsliding
By Lamine Benghazi Avocats Sans Frontières en Tunisie - ASF spotlighting Tunisia as a case study on democratic backsliding - acting as a cautionary tale for what we may lose when we allow authoritarians to seize power and reflecting on the ingredients necessary for building a robust democratic polity post-revolution.
Photo by Xingtu
Enough! The Spanish Fight to Limit Housing Speculation
Under slogans such as “The Canary Islands have a limit,” “Enough! Let’s put limits to tourism,” or “It’s over! Let’s lower the rents,” mass mobilizations have recently spread throughout Spain. The movements are a reaction against the overexploitation of the territory, real estate speculation fueled by international capital, and the effects of extreme touristification.
Seven Perspectives on International Law and Palestinian Liberation
We asked eight international legal scholars, human rights attorneys, and experts on Palestine to share their reflections on the role of international law in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. How does international law currently hinder this cause? And how might it be used — or how must it transform — to contribute to it?
Foto de Gigi Ibrahim
Popular Lawyers Resisting the Right-Wing Agenda in Argentina
Since Javier Milei came to power in December 2023, his government has combined what is now a familiar repertoire for extreme right-wing governments of the “anarcho-libertarian” variety: it has sought to dismantle all vestiges of the welfare State and social protection, while engaging in an authoritarian denial of any dissent and targeting existing rights as part of left-wing ideologies that must be eradicated.