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Jemima Garcia-Godos

Fellow

Associate Professor - Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo (UiO)

Beyond Words: Latin American Truth Commissions’ Recommendations

Project partners: University of Oslo, University of Arkansas at Little Rock,CELS (Argentina), IDEHPUPC (Peru), FLACSO (Guatemala) Funder: Norwegian Research Council, Latin America Programme. Over the past three decades, over 40 countries have established truth commissions (TCs) to investigate past patterns of gross human rights violations and recommend measures of redress. More than a third of […]

Collective Litigation of Environmental Rights in Colombia: An Empirical Study

Ángela María Páez-Murcia, Everaldo Lamprea-Montealegre and Catalina Vallejo-Piedrahíta (2017)

Vniversitas. Bogotá (Colombia), n° 134: 209-248, enero-junio de 2017

This paper presents the results of an empirical study that systematized environmental judicial opinions handed down by Colombia’s highest administrative Court —Consejo de Estado— over a 17-year period (1998-2015). Thanks to a research grant, the authors and a team of coders systematized, using state-of-the art content analysis methodologies, more than 250 opinions handed down by […]

Legal Knowledge as a Tool for Social Change: La Mesa por la Vida y la Salud de las Mujeres as an Expert on Colombian Abortion Law

Ana Cristina González Vélez and Isabel Cristina Jaramillo (2017)

The article is one of three recent publications from the project Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America. In May 2006, Colombia’s Constitutional Court liberalized abortion, introducing three circumstances under which the procedure would not be considered a crime: (1) rape or incest; (2) a risk to the woman’s health or life; and (3) fetal malformations […]

Abortion Rights Legal Mobilization in the Peruvian Media, 1990–2015

Camila Gianella (2017)

The article is one of three recent publications from the project Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America. State and non-state actors engaged in disputes to expand and limit abortion rights have engaged in legal mobilization—in other words, strategies using rights and law as a central tool for advancing contested political goals. Peru, like other Latin […]

The Battle Over Abortion Rights in Brazil’s State Arenas, 1995-2006

Marta Rodriguez de Assis Machado and Débora Alves Maciel (2017)

The article is one of three recent publications from the project Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of abortion law reform in Brazil. It focuses on the interaction of pro-choice and anti-abortion movements in different state arenas and political contexts. It details the emergence of a […]

A new conservative social movement? Latin America’s regional strategies to restrict abortion rights

Camila Gianella Malca, Rachel Sieder, Angelica Peñas and Marta Rodriguez de Assis Machado (2017)

A new brief from the project Abortion Rights Lawfare in Latin America has recently come out. Despite increased evidence of international lobbying groups working to restrict sexual and reproductive health and rights policies at international bodies such as the United Nations, little is known about transnational networks working at local level to restrict abortion rights, how […]

National Integration and the Dynamics of Coalition and Federalism in India

Kavita Navlani (2006)

The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 67, no. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2006), pp. 119-132

There is a broad consensus in social science today, which is indicating a paradigmatic shift in the theorizationof such concepts as ‘nation, nationalism, culture, identity and national integration’. It is unjust and inappropriate to view such concepts as nation, nationalism, culture, identity and national integration etc. without a due consideration to the multiple identity components […]

Tribal marginalization in India: Social exclusion and protective law

Kavita Navlani Søreide (2013)

CMI Brief vol. 12 no. 4, 2nd edition

At the time of independence, India used protective law to address fears that its tribal majority regions would be marginalized vis-a-vis the larger, more developed states of the new nation. The ‘Sixth Schedule’ was written into the Indian Constitution to ensure rights of self-government for the tribal majorities in North Eastern Himalayas. This brief explores the context of the Sixth […]

PhD course

Effects of Lawfare:  Courts and law as battlegrounds for social change (17- 25 August) 

With an option of specialization in Effects of Lawfare concerning Gender & Sexuality

OBS! New application deadline: 1 July!!!

Registration for the PhD course is now open! Application deadline is 1 July. Please visit the course page for further information about the course program and admission.  Here is the program and the reading list.

UiB candidate: Please register here

If you are not a UiB candidate: Please register here

The course combines lectures specifically designed for the course and participation in lectures, panels, round-tables, and workshops of the Bergen Exchanges on Law & Social Transformation.

Students will receive 3 ECTS for participating in the course (80% of seminars), submission of paper abstract (150-300 words), and presentation of their own work to the other participants. Students who submit a publishable journal article (4,000-6,000 words, with an additional reading list of 500 pages, which can be from the elective reading list) by 15 October 2017 are awarded an additional 7 ECTS. (Postdoctoral researchers and MA level students will be accepted if space permits).

 

The PhD course is free of charge and open to applicant from Norwegian and international institutions on a first-come first serve basis. Participants do, however, have to cover their own travel and accommodation costs, as there unfortunately are no scholarships available.

Course leaders: Camila Gianella (Comparative Politics, University of Bergen/CMI); Bruce Wilson (Professor, University of Central Florida/CMI); Siri Gloppen (Professor Comparative Politics, University of Bergen & LawTransform Director) 

 

The past three decades has seen an accelerating juridification and judicialisation of societies and politics. In all parts of the world and at all levels, from the global to the local, increasingly complex webs of legal norms and institutions regulate our societies and lives. Courts and law have become increasingly important as arenas for political struggles. Constitutional reforms and international treaties aim to transform social dynamics from above, among others though new and stronger protection of citizens’ rights, while individuals and groups engage in legal mobilization from below to seek justice for their cause. In either case dense networks of international activists and experts are ready to engage with and aid local actors, creating a dense global network of actors, legal norms, and adjudicative institutions. In this context, it is urgent to better understand law as a political field. Does this turn to rights and law have a transformative potential? Does it provide institutional spaces for the voices of marginalized groups to be heard and tools that can provide political leverage? Or does it, rather demobilize and depoliticize struggles in ways that exacerbate unequal power-relations and marginalization dynamics? These are urgent issues on which there are deep disagreements in the literature. The course offers an introduction to the scholarly debates on the potential and limits of law as an instrument of social change, and opportunities to engage with some of the foremost scholar in the field, and international research projects currently seeking more compelling answers to these questions.