This book is an unprecedented effort to analyze the role of law in the global movement for social justice. The case studies contained in the book, written by renowned scholars from different parts of the world, combine empirical research and innovative socio-juridical theory in order to shed light on a wide range of topics. These include the use of law by social movements that seek to promote indigenous rights and labor rights in Latin America; the place of law in the World Social Forum; The struggles for an intellectual property regime right in South Africa; and the strategic use of national and international standards by movements as varied as those of landless peasants in Brazil, communities displaced by “economic development” projects in India, and illegal immigrants in the United States. As the book’s editors contend in the introductory chapter, these and other cases are signs of the emergence of a kind of cosmopolitan law and politics that requires new social and legal theories capable of understanding the potential and tensions of counter-hegemonic globalization .

Below are the preliminary versions of some of the book’s chapters. The book can be purchased in Amazon.