Doctoral Dissertation Research in Law and Social Sciences: Breaking the Wall of Impunity? Strategic Litigation and Human Rights in Mexico and Colombia

在与暴力和法治作斗争的民主国家，法律动员何时才能有效鼓励国家对伤害本国人民的行为承担司法责任？该项目将分析国家严重侵犯人权行为（法外处决、酷刑和失踪）的受害者如何与非政府组织合作寻求正义，以及他们何时以及为何取得成功。它将衡量战略诉讼（国内诉讼与非政府组织组织的抗议、游说、媒体宣传、高层会议、国际团结网络和国际诉讼结合使用）对国内司法结果和当事人持续安全的影响。它认为，通过强有力的战略诉讼，受害者更有可能获得正义并提高他们的安全。通过比较墨西哥和哥伦比亚的人权案例，本研究将探讨司法自治、公民信仰和司法系统参与以及国际法的国内情况等因素如何影响这些战略的成功。通过使用定量回归和配对案例研究，它将质疑动员、正义和安全之间的关系。自下而上分析法治的有效性将为从自上而下、通常以国家为中心的对法院和法律的理解来探讨法治问题的学术提供平衡。有关下级法院司法结果、公民动员和受害者安全的数据将丰富关于国际成果的新兴法律动员奖学金。除了这些学术贡献之外，该项目还致力于为受害者及其非政府组织倡导者提供其动员活动的效果分析。此外，它还试图让决策界了解国家有罪不罚的程度，并可能提出改革的必要性：如果能够获得宣传资源的受害者得到更多正义，这表明需要确保所有受害者都有办法纠正他们在指控国家违反本国法律时所面临的资源不平衡问题。

In democracies struggling with violence and the rule of law, when is legal mobilization effective in encouraging the state to take judicial responsibility for harming its own people? This project will analyze how victims of serious, state-perpetrated human rights abuses (extra-judicial killing, torture and disappearance) collaborate with NGOs in pursuit of justice, and when and why they succeed. It will measure the influence of strategic litigation (domestic litigation used together with NGO-organized protests, lobbying, media campaigns, high-level meetings, international solidarity networks, and international litigation) on domestic judicial outcomes and litigants' ongoing safety. It posits that with strong strategic litigation, victims are more likely to achieve justice and improve their safety. By comparing human rights cases in Mexico and Colombia, this study will explore how factors like judicial autonomy, citizen faith and participation in the judicial system, and the domestic situating of international law affect the success of these strategies. By using both quantitative regression and paired case studies, it will interrogate the relationship between mobilization, justice and safety.Analyzing the efficacy of the rule of law from the bottom up will provide a balance for scholarship that has approached questions of rule of law from a top-down, often state-centered understanding of courts and law. The data on judicial outcomes in lower courts, citizen mobilization and victim security will add to the burgeoning legal mobilization scholarship on international outcomes. Beyond these scholarly contributions, the project seeks to provide victims and their NGO advocates with analysis of the efficacy of their mobilization activities. Further, it seeks to inform the policymaking community about levels of state impunity, and may suggest the need for reform: if victims with access to advocacy resources receive more justice, this suggests the need to ensure all victims have a means of redressing the resource imbalance that they confront when accusing the state of violating its own laws.