By conducting strategic litigation, Just Access intends to respond to systemic human rights issues obtaining judicial decisions that spur large-scale social changes and advance and strengthen human rights.
Strategic litigation aims to advance causes that transcend private and individual interest, focusing instead on furthering public interest causes, mainly human rights issues. The goal of this specific trend of litigation is thus not limited to obtaining a favourable legal ruling from the court. Instead, it aims to instigate broader social effects, such as pushing towards legal and/or political reform, empowering certain marginalized groups, or changing attitudes.
Just Access aims to remedy structural injustices and prevent further human rights violations, particularly those of groups that would otherwise not have their voices heard.
Therefore,
Just Access uses the courts to advance human rights in a way that reaches beyond the particular victims or applicants at the centre of the particular case and enquires into how it may contribute directly and indirectly to change
Economic, social, cultural and environmental rights often engage with a violation that is systemic in nature, meaning that there is also a need to find new ways of facilitating collective complaints and collective remedies. For example, cases related to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions clearly affect numerous persons, if not everyone.
Three distinct approaches employed by Just Access to facilitating
a collective or structural response to systemic problems:
In addition, through strategic litigation,
Just Access intends to respond to systemic human rights issues
by prompting three types of changes.
material changes for the affected individuals and communities,
instrumental changes in the form of direct and indirect changes in policy, law, jurisprudence, and institutions;
and non-material changes such as indirect shifts in attitudes, behaviors, discourses, and community empowerment.
Thereby, even judgments that are not only unfavourable but appear unjust may in certain circumstances serve the function of exposing to public criticism and international scrutiny the extent of the denial of justice, or paving the way for international litigation or other forms of pressure for example.
In planning strategic litigation projects, an important consideration is the type of impact that Just Access intends to achieve through the litigation procedure. This includes the impact on the victims; on the laws, policies and practices; on institutions; on information gathering and truth telling; on social and cultural change; on mobilisation and empowerment, and on democracy and the rule of law. Such goals — together with our assessment of the potential for impact — may affect the cases we select, where we litigate them, the way we argue them and with whom we partner, and will strongly influence strategy, tactics and plans.
Finally, it has to be noted that strategic litigation is almost always only one agent for change, alongside the other forms of advocacy, legal or political strategies by civil society organisations, activists, survivors, lawyers, international allies and others, that seek to respond to and address rights violations. Litigation may be a catalyst, contributor or facilitator to such change, but not necessarily an identifiable trigger. Therefore, an awareness of how litigation emerges from broader human rights agendas and movements, and how it might feed into them, will be an aspect of strategic litigation planning from the outset. This is where our strategic litigation agenda converges with our advocacy and education agendas.
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