Federalism, counter-legal mobilization and backlash in subnational Argentina (Córdoba and Santa Fe)

ALBA RUIBAL

Congreso; Global Meeting on Law and Society; 2022

Law and Society Association

Over the past three decades, conservative religious actors in Latin America have developed new repertoires of collective action, including legal mobilization, assimilating them to social movements or counter-movements. In the context of democratic transitions, their first relevant intervention in the legal field was their attempt to influence constituent processes to introduce a right-to-life constitutional clause. Later on, these movements developed legal strategies against reproductive rights, and turned their attention to the subnational level in federal countries, to resist the local implementation of reproductive health policies.In this context, Argentina shows one of the most systematic and persistent cases in the region of counter-legal mobilization in civil society, led by conservative NGOs based in the province of Cordoba. In this paper, we trace the socio-legal process of conservative strategic litigation developed in this subnational setting. We also compare it with the contrasting case of Santa Fe, which presents weak conservative legal mobilization, but is the most salient case of subnational electoral mobilization by conservative actors running on an anti-choice platform in Argentina. To analyze how counter legal mobilization has developed in these two provinces we consider three main variables: the local support structures for legal mobilization, legal opportunities, and political opportunities.