What is Antidemocratic Strategic Litigation?

Svenja Ahlhaus is an Assistant Professor in Political Theory at University of Münster in Germany. Her research focuses on democratic theory, especially on citizenship and belonging as well as on new democratic practices in times of crisis.

Abstract

While many scholars focus on the democratic and empowering dimensions of strategic litigation (e.g. in the debate about climate litigation), Dr Ahlhaus turns to the “dark side of strategic litigation” and asks whether and how strategic litigation might contribute to undermining democracy. She argues that antidemocratic strategic litigation is strategic litigation that undermines the citizens’ capacity for scrutinizing public and private power.

We can distinguish three types of antidemocratic strategic litigation: discouraging (targeting active citizens), disempowering (targeting public discourse), and damaging (targeting democratic institutions and infrastructures). This paper contributes to the growing debate about the normative ambivalence of strategic litigation and aims to propose normative criteria to detect antidemocratic strategic litigation.

Biography

In her research project at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” (Münster), she discusses the democratic legitimacy of religious strategic litigation. Religious groups increasingly take legal action to advance their agenda. Dr Ahlhaus asks what role strategic litigation should play in a democratic society and compare climate litigation and religious litigation. 

Professor Ahlhaus has a PhD from University of Hamburg (2018) where she also worked as a Postdoc before joining University of Münster in August 2022. She studied Political Science and Political Theory in Berlin (BA 2011), UCL (MA 2013), Frankfurt and Darmstadt (MA 2014).