Litigating health rights – what happened with the mega-judgments?

Date: Monday 20. August
Time: 11:15 – 12:15
Place: Bergen Resource Centre for International Development, Jekteviksbakken 31, Bergen

The first decade of the millennium has witnessed a surge in structural cases decided by courts of the Global South regarding health rights and their social determinants. In widely discussed mega decisions adopted in India, Colombia and Argentina courts have experimented with a variety of procedural and remedial tools in environmental health, food or health systems design. A first generation of pioneer socio-legal studies have scrutinized the context of the cases, the weak and strong remedial approaches deployed by courts, and the cases’ early direct and indirect effects.

As the cases enter their second decade of life, time is ripe to reopen the conversation to comparatively assess courts strategies and performance. What are the challenges faced by courts and other actors dealing with protracted implementation processes? How have courts internal organizational capacities and resources evolved? Has the execution of the decision involved other courts or administrative bodies? How have participation, information and transparency mechanisms been shaped? What about communication strategies? How have the impacts of the mega cases evolved? The panel will discuss from a comparative perspective the transformations observed in the courts, governments and civil society after a decade of experimentation.

With (tbc*)