Fellow Talk
Tue 27 Feb 2024 | 16:00–17:00

The Role of Non-State Actors in (anti)Gender Legal Mobilization in the Time of Populism

Fellow Talk by Karolina Kocemba (European University Institute, University of Wrocław) | Chair: Karolina Zbytniewska (EURACTIV Poland, Warsaw University) | Discussant: Ivo Gruev (Academy for European Human Rights Protection)

The project aims to examine legal mobilization in the area of women’s rights in the time of populism. In recent years, women’s rights have been intensely challenged before the regional Constitutional Courts, especially in Central and Eastern European countries. Such development results from the years of legal mobilization conducted by non-state actors – right-wing NGOs or churches. In reaction to these actions, the engagement of women’s rights defenders has also increased. That is why the main project focus is the role of non-state actors in shaping women’s rights in Central and Eastern Europe. On the one hand, right-wing organizations are effective on domestic grounds, as they led to the actual limitation of women’s rights, such as abortion and freedom from violence. On the other, liberal human rights advocates use the international judiciary and conduct cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Their actions require empirical examination, especially legal mobilization conditions and patterns. That is why the project explores non-state actors’ engagement in cases on women’s rights - their legal strategies, arguments, network, type of cases, connections with the populists, attitudes toward human rights, and legal influence.

Karolina Kocemba is a socio-legal scholar. Her fields of expertise are legal mobilization, women's rights, constitutionalism, and legal education. Karolina is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. She also works at the University of Wrocław as a post-doc in a grant project “Women as constitutional subjects in Central and Eastern Europe”, and as a researcher at the Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory. There, she defended her PhD thesis, 'Interactions in spaces of legal education,' devoted to the spatial influence on interactions in places of legal education. At the same university, she graduated with two master's degrees in law and administration. Karolina is also a graduate of The International Master in Sociology of Law of the International Institute of Sociology of Law, Oñati (Spain). In her re:constitution Fellowship project, Karolina investigates the role of non-state actors in legal mobilization in the area of women's rights.

 

The Fellow Talk will be chaired by Karolina Zbytniewska, and Ivo Gruev will be the discussant.

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