Strategic litigation in Brazil: exploring the translocalisation of a legal practice

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the unfolding of translocal legal dynamics of power and resistance, examining the case of Brazilian people’s lawyering and its encounter with and appropriation of strategic litigation, highlighting what is gained and what is lost in the process. While strategic litigation has its historical roots in the Global North, as part of the movement of public interest litigation, it has increasingly become a translocal legal practice through its transnational diffusion, pushed by transnational actors such as universities, foundations, and international NGOs. As a translocal legal practice, strategic litigation is reshaped in its encounters with local scenarios, actors, and dynamics, and acquires new meanings and features as it is adapted to respond to local challenges. At the same time, the diffusion of the practice also transforms local legal styles of lawyering that adopt it, thus posing the question of how power and identity are negotiated in transnational legal encounters.