Strategic litigation in the field of human rights – what does this entail?[1]

Strategic litigation in the field of human and civil rights denotes the use of a legal procedure in a strategic way to bring about certain social, political or legal changes.

The goal of strategic litigation is not to ‘win’ a case for a particular client. It is the impact of the legal procedure that is of importance here. For this reason, strategic litigation is also known as impact litigation. Consequently, the process generally does not begin with a client who contacts a lawyer with a problem. On the contrary, it begins with the signaling and the examination of a problem, after which a lawyer considers whether a legal procedure would solve this issue and if so, what type of procedure, at what moment in time, with which client or clients and with what claim. A lawyer considers all this before bringing a case in order to be able to expose certain human rights violations in the best possible way.

Further, strategic litigation is a supplement to other ways of bringing about change. In this regard, one can think of several different types of methods: from lobbying and advocacy, to organizing protests.

Finally, strategic litigation is about broader interests than those of an individual in a specific case and a court case has to contribute positively to the campaign for those broader interests. Sometimes, this means that even if a case was formally lost, it was still a good contribution because it generated publicity for a problem in our society or exposed a form of injustice within our community.

[1] This text is a translation of several paragraphs taken from the introduction given by Jelle Klaas, project coordinator of the PILP, at the NJCM seminar on “The climate case and strategic litigation for human rights.” This event took place on Thursday, October 22, in the Hague. Click here to access the full text (in Dutch).