In 2011, Time magazine named ‘the Protester’ its Person of the Year. The year was marked by protests that were unprecedented in their dynamism and global reach. From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow," the magazine's cover proclaimed. Since then, we can observe two dynamics. First, the protests have not stopped, but have become more interconnected and global. Second, the social movements behind them have increasingly incorporated legal language, tools, and strategies into their actions. Strategic litigation or an application to an international court have become a constant in the repertoire of social movements. From Climate Strike to Urgenda Case, from Polish Black Protest to European Court of Human Rights" could be on the cover of Time today.
The intertwining of protest, social movements, and law challenges classical legal dichotomies such as private-public, creation-implementation, political-legal or individual-community. The aim of this special workshop is to reflect on theoretical approaches to protest and legal mobilization from the perspective of contemporary legal and political philosophy.

During the workshop we will discuss topics like:

• protest as rule generator
• laws and practices of democratic dissent
• violence and legal change
• the impact of protest on legal interpretation
• the rule of law and social movements
• strategic litigation in the XXI century
• the contemporary status of freedom of assembly
• the constitutional status of social movements
• constituent power and legal mobilization
• indigenous rights movements and non-Western epistemologies of law
• law and the political economy of legal mobilization

The list of participants is almost close with few slots still open. Submissions with a short abstract (up to 400 words) should be sent as soon as possible to Michał Stambulski (stambulski@law.eur.nl).