Law, Mobilization of

Legal mobilization refers to the social processes through which law is invoked in situations perceived as problematic. In liberal democracies, much of legal mobilization occurs in the activation of legal rights, emerging out of processes through which people transform the meaning of injurious situations and seek redress for them. Multiple contextual factors influence this process, including social hierarchy, interpersonal relationships, culture, and organizational and institutional (legal) structures. Collective legal mobilization is often aimed at social change with both instrumental (indirect/direct) and constitutive effects. Cutting-edge research has begun to examine legal mobilization across multiple contexts, including authoritarian regimes and transnational fields.