Critical Praxis for Transnational Movement-Lawyering

Abstract

This Article seeks to identify new ways to respond to critiques of international human rights practice as hierarchy-reproducing, extractive, and imperialist. It proposes one model for how human rights lawyers can better work in solidarity with oppressed communities organizing around common grievances: transnational movement-lawyering. While the framing of community-led lawyering has become rapidly popularized in the human rights field, work remains to ensure that this theoretical and discursive shift translates into a transformation of the day-to-day mechanics of human rights practice. This Article seeks to identify concrete ways to apply critical theory and participatory methodologies to human rights practice. Part I summarizes key critiques of power, hierarchy, and extractivism in human rights practice. Part II begins with a reflection on the theory of change that underpins the Article. Part III draws lessons from critical-lawyering models—community lawyering and movement lawyering in the United States and popular lawyering and accompaniment lawyering in Latin America—to define practices and approaches to build a model of transnational movement lawyering. Part IV complements this study of critical-lawyering models by taking an interdisciplinary approach to draw lessons from the models of Participatory Action Research and Community-Based Participatory Research. This Part proposes a set of values that can form the backbone of a model of transnational movement-lawyering and provides a guide to six participatory methods that can be used in transnational movement-lawyering: (1) participatory workshops, focus groups, and baseline assessments; (2) social cartography and counter-mapping; (3) transect walks; (4) participant generated timelines; (5) network and power mapping; and (6) Post-it brainstorms. This Part also provides concrete examples of implementing these methods with social movements in Latin America. While this Article focuses on the pitfalls, challenges, and opportunities of applying these methodologies in transnational lawyering, the methods and methodologies themselves have relevance for a wide array of public interest work, domestic and transnational.