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

Speakers