Legal Mobilization in the Global Age: Expanding the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Analysis

本研究探讨了法律的动员的成本和后果。法律的动员是努力推进法律的权利主张，并在社会变革运动中使用诉讼。使用档案材料，私人文件，和法律的记录，研究小组将分析一个菲律宾裔美国罐头厂工人的小工会在七十年的过程中的活动，最终导致了具有里程碑意义的美国最高法院在沃兹湾包装公司诉阿托尼奥案（1989年）的裁决。通过研究三代工人如何在种族和经济正义的斗争中使用诉讼，以及将这些美国运动与菲律宾的政治和社会斗争相结合，研究结果将在理论上推进现有的法律的动员模式，将诉讼定位为一个多阶段的，渐进的，在全球化的世界中，一系列潜在的变革过程。最近的许多学者认为，狭隘的反-20世纪50年代民权诉讼中出现的歧视原则分裂了民权运动和经济正义运动。目前的研究对这一理论提出了挑战。因此，这项研究完善了目前对美国劳工和民权运动中法律作用的理解。

This research investigates the cost and consequences of legal mobilization. Legal mobilization is the effort to advance legal rights claims and use litigation in campaigns for social change. Using archival materials, private papers, and legal records, the research team will analyze the activities of a small union of Filipino American cannery workers over the course of seventy years that eventually culminated in the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989). By examining how three generations of workers used litigation in struggles for both racial and economic justice as well as integrated these US campaigns with political and social struggles in the Philippines, the findings will theoretically advance existing legal mobilization models by situating litigation as a multi-stage, incremental, and potentially transformative set of processes in a globalized world.Much recent scholarship has argued that the narrow anti-discrimination principles that emerged through civil rights litigation of the 1950s divided movements for civil rights and economic justice. The current research challenges this theory. As such, the research refines the current understandings of the role of law in movements for labor and civil rights in the United States.