Friday, 31 March 2023 to Sunday, 2 April 2023

Women’s Complaint as a window into the Polish society. Legal mobilization against authoritarian backsliding following the Abortion Law

Sun2 Apr11:40am(20 mins)
Where:
Gilbert Scott Room 251
Presenter:

Authors

Agnieszka Kubal11 University College London, UK

Discussion

The decision of the Constitutional Tribunal (CT) from October 2020 has severely curtailed women reproductive rights in Poland. Mass protests ensued. This paper focuses on the untold story of a productive rupture that channelled the protesters efforts into a mass legal mobilization against the CT judgment to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). These applications, known as ‘Women’s Complaint’, were filed by over one-thousand Polish women. Triangulating between the analysis of interviews with human rights lawyers, feminist activists and the legal reasoning of the petition, I treat Women’s Complaint as a window into the Polish society as it provides unique glimpses into a society in deep conflict, embroiled in rule-of-law crisis, and exposes Law and Justice government’s ‘ruling by cheating’ strategies (as conceptualised by András Sajó). Women’s Complaint is about women standing for their reproductive rights and – in effect – spearheading a much broader rights-based litigation against the authoritarian backsliding. 

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