What is Antidemocratic Strategic Litigation?

On 1 June, Svenja Ahlhaus gave a lecture about her research on democratic theory and strategic litigation. Svenja is an Assistant Professor in Political Theory at University of Münster in Germany.

Here is a recording of the event:

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.