With the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) inherited extraordinary political powers. In response to the Court's expanded power of judicial review, there was a sizeable increase in the number of political actors “intervening” in SCC cases. Scholars of Canadian law and politics are deeply divided on whether civil society participation in the courts—particularly as intervenors—is democratically legitimate. This important debate cannot be settled without an empirical evaluation of who intervenes. This research note provides an analysis of all the Charter cases heard by the SCC between 2013 and 2021. In contrast to the field's dominant theory on interest-group legal mobilization—the Court Party thesis—the findings reveal that equity-deserving interest groups, such as those representing women, have an irregular presence in Court. Instead, powerful actors such as governments and legal associations make up a majority of the “repeat player” intervenors. While further research is warranted, the research note concludes that without the maintenance of sufficient support structures, intervention may be unable to perform a democratizing function.

This article examines how EU rights and laws serve as legal opportunity structures for women’s rights activists in Europe. Further, it examines what effects this transnational activism has on the permanence and inclusion of public interests and gender equality in EU legal and political processes. The analysis examines the legal domain of EU women’s rights over a thirty-year period. Methodologically, the study relies on case law analysis, primary document collections, and interviews with non-governmental organizations and governmental elites at both the EU and the national level. I ask how legal mobilization can serve as a catalyst for institutional change (by influencing litigation and legislative action), and how this effects subsequent EU-level women’s rights mobilization and public inclusion.

Over the past fifteen years, substantive equality and the idea of positive measures to tackle the structural roots of gender inequality have increasingly gained currency in Europe. Focusing on the case of Greece, this article explores the factors that promote constitutional and statutory reforms to promote substantive equality, and examines the effect of such reforms on gender equality rights and policy. It argues that domestic legal and social mobilization by feminists, who participated in transnational networks, were instrumental in the diffusion of the relevant EU and international norms, leading to a shift in the courts’ jurisprudence and to a constitutional amendment recognizing substantive equality. At the same time, the paper also underscores the ambivalent and limited effects of constitutionalizing substantive equality and positive measures in the absence of ongoing actions aimed at raising awareness and pushing for effective implementation.

Legal mobilization in the courts has emerged as an increasingly important social movement strategy, which complements other political strategies. This paper explores legal and institutional factors that can account for the varying levels of legal mobilization in countries with a civil law system. It examines the different legal opportunity structures (LOS) (such as judicial access and material and procedural law) and the extent to which strategic litigation has been employed by trade unions and other social actors to promote equal pay in four European countries: Switzerland, Germany, France, and Poland. While every component of LOS influences legal mobilization, legal factors and legal context alone are not sufficient to explain the observed variations. Rather, they constitute an important general framework in which other social and political factors, such as norms about gender roles, equality, and litigation, are also significant. Two issues seem to be especially relevant and have emerged as a rewarding field of analysis—the role of media coverage and organizational action frames.