Legal Mobilization: Assessing the Potential and Limits of Law-based Civic Advocacy

In this timely book Jeff Handmaker critically reflects on the opportunities and challenges of law-based advocacy. Exploring different functions of law through an analytical concept and approach of legal mobilization, this book provides a unique reflection on how law can address systemic crises.

Legal Mobilization discusses the strategic potential of law-based, civic-led advocacy and surveys how legal mobilization can serve as a form of counterpower to state and corporate-led lawfare. Using mixed methodologies, drawing on personal experience and sometimes in conversation with Sanele Sibanda and Sanne Taekema, Handmaker covers a variety of pressing international issues such as the struggle for migrants’ rights in the Netherlands and the global push for Palestinian rights, as well as legal battles in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book also examines ‘lawfare blowback’, the hegemonic use of law by governments, companies and other non-governmental actors seeking to disrupt the efforts of advocates.

This is an essential resource for students and academics across the fields of law and development, law and society, migration studies, constitutional(ism) and administrative law, public policy and human rights. It is also an enlightening read for legal professionals and NGO practitioners, and in particular those working on migrant advocacy, Palestinian rights and racialized inequalities more generally.

Jeff Handmaker, Associate Professor of Legal Sociology, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Visiting Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa