From Brown v. Board of Education to landmark decisions in India on the right to food, one of the most effective—and controversial—social-change agents is strategic litigation. For its supporters, like the Open Society Foundations, strategic (impact or public-interest) litigation is an under-appreciated tool of empowerment and social change that donors, governments, and civil society advocates should exploit more—and more skillfully—to prompt and/or expedite the provision of protection and remedies and make jurisprudence ever more accommodating of human rights. For its detractors, strategic litigation is an expensive, time-consuming, risky, and often elitist enterprise that has yet to prove its worth.
For many others, the competing claims about strategic litigation shed little light and leave a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. And for the vast majority of the world’s population, legal remedies such as strategic litigation are either unheard of or a distant dream.
Highlights
- Sherrilyn Ifill on the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (3 minutes)
- Colin Gonsalves with an assessment of the efficacy of strategic litigation in India (3 minutes)
- Dmitri Holtzman on the marriage of strategic litigation and direct action (2 minutes)
- Colin Gonsalves on the role of the lawer: instigator of social movements (5 minutes)
- Dmitri Holtzman with a critique of instigational lawyering (3 minutes)
- Sherrilyn Ifill on the incalculable value of strategic litigation (1 minute)
Speakers
- Colin Gonsalves, founding director of India’s leading strategic litigation organization, the Human Rights Legal Network, a nationwide network of more than 200 lawyers, paralegals, and social activists spread across 26 states/union territories
- Dmitri Holtzman, PILnet fellow and former executive director of the Equal Education Law Centre, South Africa’s pioneering litigation partner of the grassroots movement Equal Education, which is leading nation-wide campaigns for improvements to school infrastructure
- Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the United States’ largest and most prominent civil rights law and advocacy group
- James A. Goldston (moderator), executive director, Open Society Justice Initiative