Accessing Justice Amidst Inequality: Claims-Making in the Global South

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The adjudication of justice is a core function of the state, integral to the rule of law, public security, and to the realization of citizens’ fundamental rights. And yet citizens worldwide struggle to secure basic protection and responsiveness from the state. This panel draws on comparative evidence from the global south – from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa – to ask when, why, and how citizens take on the arduous task of navigating the state’s legal institutions – from the police, to the courts, to other sites of grievance redressal – and to analyze the material and political consequences of those efforts. In highly unequal societies where citizens express low confidence that the legal system and state institutions will treat them fairly and efficiently, when and why do citizens look to the state for redress despite this? What strategies – formal and informal – are pursued, at what cost and to what ends? How does citizen engagement with legal, judicial, and security bodies affect the accessibility and accountability of these core public institutions?

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 26: Law and Courts

Individual Presentations

• Public Mistrust of the Justice System and Legal Mobilization in Latin America - Lisa Hilbink, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Valentina Salas, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Intersectional Engagement and Justice in Latin America - Juliana Restrepo Sanin, University of Florida; Janice Kreinick Gallagher, Rutgers-Newark; Valentina Salas, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Invoking Law in a Lawless Land: Hybrid Legal Tactics in Authoritarian Cambodia - Farrah Tek, University of Minnesota

Chair

• Lisa L. Miller Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Discussants

• Lisa L. Miller Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• Kathryn Hendley University of Wisconsin, Madison