Lunch seminar with Isil Kurnaz

Conceptual And Theoretical Dimensions Of Strategic Human Rights Litigation (Shrl) In Echr’s Assessment: An Analysis Through The Culture Wars

Strategic litigation is the use of judicial and quasi-judicial procedures to identify a widespread and systematic violation of human rights in order to achieve justice in a broad sense beyond a specific case that is not related to a singular victimization, and to achieve legal, social and political results and changes by influencing policy-making processes, law and policy implementation through a case determined and carried out with a strategic and tactical approach, regardless of the aim of winning the case. The multiple and complex definition and elements here distinguish strategic litigation from other judicial and litigation processes. So what makes strategic litigation strategic? While litigation and strategic litigation both refer to a legal action to solve problems, the key point of distinction is the element of intent and purpose.

The main research question here is whether strategic human rights litigation differs from the legal strategies and tactics of civil society organizations when it comes to conflictual and intersectional rights groups. Strategic human rights litigation, which we can see as the legal application field of culture wars, also manifests itself before the ECHR as a conflict of the right to life against abortion, freedom of religion against LGBTI+ rights, and traditional rights arising from family law against surrogacy. So how do these two opposing groups, civil society organizations on the one hand, which are confined to the dichotomy of progressive and reactionary, and on the other hand, which actually use the discourse of human rights and the rhetoric of rights and mobilize their own masses with similar tools, diverge when it comes to legal mobilization? Are rights weapons used in the legal battle of the culture wars?

In asking these questions, how do the doctrines used by the ECtHR replace conceptual history and theoretical explanations? What are the implications of applying critical legal theory to this field? Most importantly, how can we conduct a debate on the content of law if the strategies of the two opposing groups using human rights discourse to protect their overlapping interests are the same?

Speaker bio

Işıl Kurnaz is a PhD researcher at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy. Her PhD thesis focuses on Strategic Human Rights Litigation and Culture Wars Before European Court of Human Rights. She has been researching in the intersecting interests between the religious/ faith-based litigants and feminist/gender equality-based litigants under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Martinico from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.  She is a lawyer with specific interest in international human rights law, international law and constitutional law. She obtained her LL.M. degree with distinction from Lund University with  a merit-based Swedish Government Scholarship in the name of Anna Lindh by the Swedish Institute where she has also been awarded Lund University Global Scholarship. She worked as a consultant in the United Nations Women Chapter and as a trainer in various organizations such as Amnesty International, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation regarding gender equality, human rights, constitutional jurisprudence and strategic human rights litigation before ECHR.

As a consultant in UN, she has written the report on equal political representation of women and the LGBTİQ+ community (co-authored with Aslıhan Tekin from the European Women's Lobby). She also worked on the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote Convention), as a legal consultant at the International Child Center.  She is a registered lawyer at the Ankara Bar Association, a member of the Women's Coalition in Turkey and a member of the Network for Future Global Leaders by the Swedish Institute.  Her personal interests are literature, philosophy, poetry.

Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 658 3184 8624
Passcode: 323720