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

在与暴力和法治斗争的民主国家，法律动员何时能有效地鼓励国家为伤害自己的人民承担司法责任？该项目将分析严重的、国家犯下的侵犯人权行为（法外杀戮、酷刑和失踪）的受害者如何与非政府组织合作追求正义，以及他们何时和为什么会成功。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、媒体运动、高级别会议、国际团结网络和国际诉讼一起使用）对国内司法结果和诉讼当事人持续安全的影响。它认为，通过强有力的战略诉讼，受害者更有可能实现正义，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、公民信仰和参与司法系统以及国际法的国内情况等因素如何影响这些策略的成功。通过使用定量回归和配对案例研究，它将询问动员、正义和安全之间的关系。从下到上分析法治的效力，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处理法治问题的学术研究提供一个平衡。关于下级法院司法结果、公民动员和受害者安全的数据将为新兴的关于国际结果的法律动员奖学金增添新的内容。除了这些学术贡献之外，该项目还旨在为受害者及其非政府组织倡导者提供动员活动效果的分析。此外，它还试图向政策制定界通报国家有罪不罚的程度，并可能建议改革的必要性：如果能够获得倡导资源的受害者得到更多的正义，这表明有必要确保所有受害者在指控国家违反自己的法律时都有办法纠正资源不平衡。

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.