Who Influences International Human Rights Jurisprudence, and How?

On May 17, 2017, ActInCourts hosted a workshop on “Legal Mobilization and International Courts”, where we shared knowledge on who drives the development of international human rights courts’ case law, and how – including judges, lawyers, NGOs, and donor organizations that provide funding to train and support litigation programs.

As regional international human rights courts have an increasing influence over state policy and our lives, understanding who drives human rights jurisprudence, or who influences how judges make their decisions, becomes crucial.

Studies increasingly find that human rights activists — whether NGOs or individual lawyers — play crucial roles in forwarding cases to international human rights tribunals, persuading tribunal judges of the soundness of the claims, and implementing the final judgments domestically.

Our workshop brought together leading scholars on the topic and practitioners in the field to examine this pressing and timely question in the evolution of human rights jurisprudence.