Community-Driven Litigation
Learn how we can help you use the courts to strengthen your campaigns to achieve long-lasting, systemic change
Reclaiming the courts for racial, social, and economic justice
Systemic Justice works with an intersectional, community-driven approach to strategic litigation. Too often, litigation is shaped by lawyers or institutions rather than by the people most affected, reinforcing unequal power dynamics and overlooking the lived experiences and priorities of marginalised communities. Our model reverses this dynamic: we litigate with our partners, not for them. Our partners are our co-creators: they lead the work and set the agenda, while we equip them with the legal support they need to reclaim their power in the courts.
Recognising that structural change is a long-term effort, we build strategies that tackle root causes rather than merely addressing the symptoms of inequality.
Photo: Anti-Islamophobia demonstration, Paris / Joris van Gennip
We believe the law and courts are essential to achieving that lasting change. In this model, litigation is one tool within a broader campaign for change, and it is most effective when paired with other advocacy efforts with its impact reaching far beyond a single case.
We also centre communities in deciding what we work on as an organisation: our priorities are shaped by the needs articulated by organisations, movements, and collectives working on racial, social, economic, and climate justice across Europe. Through our community consultations, we ensure that our work is informed directly by communities’ needs and visions for change.
As injustices don’t occur in isolation but intersect across multiple identities, experiences, and systems, we ground our work in the values of anti-oppression, intersectionality, and justice to ensure that litigation strategies reflect communities’ lived realities.
Photo: Community Visions for Liberation event, Berlin / Mohamed Badarne
Other key work areas
Building knowledge and power
All too often, communities are unable to take advantage of the full potential of litigation, and access to legal knowledge is often mediated by lawyers or legal advisors. At Systemic Justice, we aim to help build the knowledge and power of communities, movements, and collectives so that they can make informed choices about how they want to incorporate strategic litigation in their campaigns for change.
Community of practice
There is a growing desire within the legal field to take a more community-focused approach in litigation work. To support this change, we are facilitating a Community of Practice – a participatory space where litigators, legal practitioners, and litigating organisations can come together for mutual learning, unlearning, and shared reflection.