A special issue on The Legal Mobilization of the Right Against Rights, edited by Simón Escoffier, Leigh A. Payne and Gabriel Pereia, was published in Law & Society Review. in June (avilable here) The articles examine examples from Sweden, Chile, Egypt and Tunisia, including less visible forms of change taking place inside state institutions. Among the findings is that legal action can have an impact even when it does not succeed in court. It can bring previously settled questions back into public debate, create uncertainty about existing rights and strengthen the position of the actors behind the cases.
The special issue was launched at the 2026 Bergen Exchanges with a double roundtable exploring how conservative and right wing actors increasingly use law to challenge and remake existing rights. In the first part, the editors and some of the authors presented the special issue, while the second part opened a broader discussion about emerging forms of conservative legal mobilization across different regions and political contexts. For more on the roundtable and the participants, see below – or watch the video here.
From the #BeEx2026 program:
LEGAL COUNTERMOBILISATION – REMAKING OF RIGHTS BY THE RIGHT (LAUNCH OF SPECIAL ISSUE). Around the world, conservative and right-wing actors are increasingly turning to law not to reject rights, but to remake them. Through litigation, constitutional reform, administrative action, and strategic legal advocacy, they deploy the language of rights, legality, and democracy to reshape who is entitled to rights, which rights deserve protection, and whose interests the law should serve. Rather than simply opposing human rights, these actors selectively expand some rights while restricting or delegitimizing others. This double session explores these evolving dynamics through the lens of the special issue The Legal Mobilization of the Right Against Rights (Law & Society Review June 2026). Moving beyond the language of “backlash,” the special issue develops a framework for understanding right-wing legal mobilization as a strategic effort to use legal institutions and rights discourse to challenge advances in gender equality, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, migrants’ rights, and other protections for marginalized groups. Drawing on research from Latin America, North Africa, Europe, and beyond, it shows how countermobilization operates across courts, constitution-making, state institutions, and transnational networks. The first part launches the special issue, with contributors discussing its conceptual and empirical insights, including how rights are reframed through claims about democracy, sovereignty, religion, family, and popular will. (This session is part of the project Conservative Legal Mobilization, supported by the Law & Society Association),
ROUNDTABLE participants: Karina Ansolabehere, UNAM, Mexico, Maira Ixchel Benítez, Secihti-Instituto Mora, Mexico (digital); Simón Escoffier, Catholic University of Chile (digital); Juliana Jaramillo, Catholic University of Chile. Chair: Gabriel Pereira, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina
LEGAL COUNTERMOBILISATION BY THE RIGHT – NEW FRONTIERS: Looking beyond the special issue, this roundtable explores new frontiers of legal countermobilization and right-wing legal mobilization. It traces how conservative and anti-gender movements seek to remake rights around gender, family, and sexuality; how these struggles connect to broader efforts to reshape constitutional institutions, citizenship, and belonging; and how powerful economic actors use law to resist Indigenous, environmental, and territorial rights. Across Africa, Europe, India, and Latin America, these forms of countermobilization involve different actors and agendas but increasingly intersect through shared legal ideas, strategies, and transnational networks. The roundtable examines how political, religious, and economic actors mobilize law to challenge rights advances, defend or reconfigure established orders, and transform the institutions through which rights and democracy are governed. In doing so, it asks what these emerging forms of countermobilization reveal about the changing politics of rights—and about law as an increasingly important battleground over social and political transformation. This is part of the project Conservative Legal Mobilization (supported by Law & Society Association),
SPEAKERS: Satang Nabaneh, University of Dayton, USA: LEGAL COUNTERMOBILIZATION IN AFRICA; Francesca Feo, Dep. of Government, UiB: CONSERVATIVE REMAKING OF RIGHTS IN EUROPE; Victor Giusti, Central European University, Austria: CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUTIONALIZATION; Angana Chatterji, UC Berkley, USA: HINDU NATIONALIST REMAKING OF RIGHTS; Ana Carolina Alfinito Vieira, Amazon Watch/Federal University of Para, Brazil.