Defending & Expanding Democracy
Over many years, we at Movement Law Lab have been assessing the growing threats to democracy in the U.S. and globally, and specifically the role of lawyers in not only defending democracy and pro-democracy social movements, but in also building toward a more expansive vision of what democracy could be: multi-racial, gender-inclusive, honoring all forms of labor, and ecologically grounded.
In 2024, our work became sharply focused on the rising tide of authoritarianism in the U.S. — while also sharpening our internationalist lens on this trend. As you’ll read below, we continue to build the intellectual grounding and strategic organizational networks needed for progressive lawyers and social-movement leaders to collaborate more powerfully.
Dispatches on Democracy
ARTICLE SERIES
Beginning in late 2023, we launched a series of articles in partnership with Convergence Magazine aimed especially at social-justice lawyers. Our goals have been to awaken the progressive legal sector to the magnitude of the growing authoritarian threat; to show how resisting that threat is inseparable from all the legal issues and work those lawyers are already tackling; and to chart a way forward for lawyers willing to collaborate deeply with social movements.
Over the course of this series, we help both lawyers and organizers understand the gravity of what is at stake when democracy erodes. We offer encouragement for how lawyers in every sector can become protagonists in the multi-racial-democracy movement. We also lift up examples of lawyers and legal institutions, in the U.S. and abroad, who are moving beyond winning cases to building collective power.
“Authoritarianism not only represses us, it depresses us.”
Camila Gomes, Coordinator of International Advocacy and Litigation, Terra de Direitos, Brazil
How Lawyers Can Help Build Power to Defeat Authoritarianism
WEBINARS
Parallel with the Dispatches on Democracy, we launched a four-part webinar series in early 2024 to reach a broad audience with fresh perspectives on the creep of fascism and the particular role lawyers could fill in fighting for a visionary form of democracy. The webinars centered on dialogues with renowned intellectuals, organizers, and legal experts to sharpen our analysis anti-democratic forces in the US and globally, the role of law, and what lawyers can do.
“We as movement lawyers start from the idea that law is a field of argumentation, and we use what we have at hand to support social struggles.
Jomary Ortegón. President of Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR), Colombia (read bio)
‘Unprecedented’ gathering of law & organizing for democracy
HIGH-LEVEL CONVENING
We organized a high-impact meeting of a few dozen legal and social-movement leaders, representing a broad spectrum of progressive organizations, to build more trust with each other; to build a stronger vision for the kind of democracy we were collectively fighting for; and to better understand the diversity of legal tactics we would need to achieve that vision. The table we set was unique: there were many convenings about defending existing democratic structures and rights, organized by and for only mainstream lawyers and legal organizations; and there were spaces where only social movements were sharing and aligning their pro-democracy strategies. Only Movement Law Lab could build the bridge between these two critical sectors and create a space where lawyers and organizers could build strategy toward a future, more expansive democracy — not just defending existing rights. This closed-door meeting in June in Washington D.C. laid important groundwork of thinking and relationships leading into this year’s fiercely contested election season and what comes after.
Movement Lawyering in Times of Rising Authoritarianism
GLOBAL SYMPOSIUM
On July 3-5, 2024, the Global Network of Movement Lawyers — a project of Movement Law Lab — in partnership with Labá - direito, espaço & política (of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Terra de Direitos hosted the Symposium Movement Lawyering in Times of Rising Authoritarianism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Movement lawyers from five continents, researchers, activists, and local law students gathered to learn how movement lawyers have used (or pushed against) the law to support social movements in the face of repressive regimes and collectively discuss new ways of confronting compounding global crises. Through these conversations, it became clear that the only way to defend the rights and well-being of grassroots people — no matter how local or insular the threat initially appeared — was through internationalist solidarity and creativity in both organizing and lawyering.
“I found in this struggle a way to continue exercising my motherhood, to continue taking care of my son. Because that's what happens when our children are murdered. We don't have the right to mourn and we need to go out in defense of that child. Because for the police it's not enough just to kill the body, you have to take everything away, the dignity of the person, you have to criminalize these bodies in order to somehow give legitimacy to these murders. Unfortunately, we live in a racist, prejudiced society that kills, imprisons and disappears black bodies.”
Ana Paula de Oliveira: Founder of Mães de Manguinhos, Brazil. Read bio.
Written Work Coming out of the Symposium
Through the lens of law and political economy, movement lawyers understand that the law and legal institutions have primarily served to protect capitalism and not everyday people. The movement lawyering approach adopts this lens to come up with creative ways of using the law to confront the structural impediments inherent in our global economic and political order that limit the emancipatory horizons to which movements may aspire.
A Global Approach to Countervailing Oligarchic Power
In addition to organizing the powerful symposium, Meena found time to write another superb article for lawyers and social-movement leaders alike to reassess the scale at which they need to think and operate.
“[I]f our campaigns only design strategies to countervail the power of oligarchs within the U.S., we miss the fact that oligarchs are able to amass wealth and exert power in a way that defies borders…. Oligarchs operate in our global economy solely to continue to grow their wealth as a global economic class, and do so in ways that preserve racial hierarchy.”
Taking action in the courts & in the streets
LAWYERING FOR MOVEMENTS
In 2024, not only have we built the intellectual scaffolding for lawyers and social movements to take more strategic action, we have also been directly involved in the action itself.
Organizing legal voices on behalf of Palestinian people
Well before the current Middle East warring, Movement Law Lab has been committed to the sovereignty and dignity of Palestine. As the brutality in Palestine escalated in 2023 and 2024, our Director of Global Programs, Meena Jagannath helped organize over 140 international human-rights organizations to sign-on to amicus briefs she wrote at two key moments (1, 2) in a historic lawsuit filed by our partners at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Defense of Children International - Palestine v. Biden. This case demanded that the U.S. be held accountable for its complicity in providing military aid and diplomatic support to Israel’s escalating genocide in Gaza — a direct violation of U.S. treaty obligations and international law. The urgency for this case has only increased as Israel has expanded its military attacks in the West Bank and Lebanon. Though the case has since been dismissed, Movement Law Lab is honored to stand with CCR and the Palestinian people in this moment.
Protecting & emboldening people’s voices at the DNC
In mid-August, our Director of Movement Partnerships Joey Mogul and Associate Director Ruby-Beth Buitekant joined with scores of lawyers and legal workers to provide legal support to thousands of protestors who demonstrated at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. Their work started with a bold pre-emptive call for Chicago’s mayor and police chief to back down from their threats of forcefully repressing peaceful demonstrations at and around the political convention. This open letter, written with a dozen co-signers, was covered in the Chicago Sun Times, Chicago’s Southside Weekly, and TruthOut.
Joey and Ruby-Beth also invested many hours providing legal support before, during, and after a particular demonstration by Equity And Transformation (EAT). EAT’s “Keep It 1000” campaign focused on demands for their to be national, federal-government action toward studying, and ultimately providing, reparations to Black Americans for our centuries-long history of chattel slavery, lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and other legalized discrimination.
Protecting People’s Right to Vote in 2024
Our Movement Partnerships’s team coordinated a situation room for the 2024 Presidential election with the Advancement Project, Center for Constitutional Rights, Law for Black Lives, with support from the Amistad Law Project, Community Justice Project, Just Futures Law, and the National Lawyers Guild. The situation played a unique role in the election season serving as an on-call multi-issue rapid response legal team for movement groups mobilizing nonpartisan GOTV and voting rights work, including issues addressing police/law enforcement, vigilante and racially/gender/politically motivated based violence. The situation room also served as consultants for groups considering mobilization efforts and shared invaluable know your rights information.
Coalitions
Key formations we are part of in 2024:
“This is a struggle that doesn't just belong to the indigenous movement, but must be international. This isn't a crisis. It's an attempt to destroy our people and the whole world. If you wipe out indigenous territories, you'll be wiped out too. We are 5% of the world's population, but we protect 80% of the planet's biodiversity. We're not just talking about the lives of indigenous peoples, but the life of the planet.”
— Auricélia Arapiuns
This recap of Session 1: Why Progressive Lawyers Must Join the Pro-Democracy Fight offers insights into the authoritarian crisis, highlights valuable resources, and invites you to register for our upcoming webinars. Empower your legal practice to defend democracy.