Holding on to Legalism

Abstract

Russian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly pursue domestic change by litigating before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The Russian government aims to decrease the amount of these applications and curtail the activities of these NGOs. In Russia, where legalism is often performed but sparsely delivered, NGOs engage into advocacy to supplement their international litigation. Advocating for domestic policy changes has, however, become potentially dangerous for NGOs under new curtailing legislation. Through interviews with Russian human rights practitioners, this article analyzes how two NGOs – the Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial and the Committee against Torture – work in between their belief that law can effect into change and the necessity to supplement their litigation with other strategies. In particular, it analyzes the interactions between the state and the NGOs by examining, first, how NGOs mobilize claims before the Court as leverage in disputes, and second, how a restrictive environment affects the NGOs’ litigation.

Keywords

Civil society European Convention on Human Rights legal mobilization nongovernmental organizations public interest litigation Russian Federation

Introduction

In 1998, two events deeply transformed human rights defense in the Russian Federation. First, by becoming a member state of the Council of Europe (CoE), Russia ratified the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereafter: the Convention). Second, Protocol 11 to the Convention came into force, institutionalizing the right to individual petition, enabling all citizens of the 47 CoE member states to lodge direct complaints with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or ‘the Court’) when they allege that their state violated their Convention rights. Both developments expanded the already burgeoning caseload pending before the Court as citizens from Russia and the recently integrated East European states started to litigate.¹ In fact, Russians litigate with such fervor that, by January 2013, in all 28,600 of their applications are pending before the ECtHR (ECtHR, 2013: 8).²

Russian lawyers working for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were quick on the take to use this international mechanism to mobilize legal pressure in their domestic campaigns. These NGOs engage into public interest litigation, a type of legal action aiming ‘to precipitate social change through court-ordered decrees that reform legal rules, enforce existing laws, and articulate public norms’ (Chayes, 1976). Only recently have academics begun to pay attention to the strategies behind NGO litigation projects before the ECtHR (Cichowski, 2011; Haddad, 2012; Hodson, 2011, 2013; McIntosh Sundstrom, 2012; Van der Vet, 2012, 2013).³ In fact, Russian NGOs are amid the most active representatives; a majority of decisions with NGO involvement cluster in cases where Russia acts as a defendant (37% between 2000 and 2009) (Mayer, 2010: 925).⁴

This article expands this body of literature on NGO litigation before the ECtHR by scrutinizing how litigation shapes relations between the state and NGOs. Public interest lawyers are ambiguous actors as they mediate between the legal and political: they practice law as a means to promote the public good, affect policy, or seek remedies for a group of disadvantaged individuals (Sarat and Scheingold, 2005). Activists and lawyers devoted to the idea of legalism believe that social change can be effected through the enforcement of legal rights rather than through political bargaining. Legalism is the strong conviction that law, society, and politics operate separately: law is a counterweight to politics. Legalistic thinking in human rights holds that rights are a universal set of values on justice and human dignity embedded in law (McEvoy, 2008: 21). Kennedy (2002: 116), in this regard, criticized that ‘human rights promises more than it can deliver’ as it offers ‘a legal vocabulary for achieving justice outside the clash of political interest’, ignoring that law is a site of political conflict itself (Koskenniemi, 2001).

This study therefore seeks to expand our knowledge on the practice of human rights in Russia and how practitioners use legalism in cooperation or confrontation with the state. Legalism is particularly strong in Russian legal education and research even though a common argument is that law in Russia is without value as it can easily be manipulated by politicians (see Muravyeva, 2013, for a critique). This duality between politics and rights has become increasingly problematic after the State Duma passed law No. 121-FZ – the infamous ‘foreign agent law’ – to constrain the ‘political activity’ of human rights defenders who receive foreign funding. In such an environment, it is crucial for human rights NGOs to maintain their status as legalistic actors and deny their roles as promoters of policy change.

This study presents how two NGOs – the Committee against Torture (Komitet Protiv Pytok, CAT) and the Anti-Discrimination Centre (Antidiskriminatsionnyi Tsentr Memorial; ADCM) – have, first, appealed to the ECtHR as legal and symbolic leverage in domestic disputes and, second, mobilized Convention rights in a restrictive political environment (ADCM, 2014b; CAT, 2014b).⁵ In particular, this article argues that while NGO litigation depends on legalism, an optimistic belief that the mobilization of human rights happens outside the political sphere, NGOs face the dilemma to combine litigation with political bargaining. In an environment where civic activities are restricted by authorities through administrative measures, NGOs have to frame their activities with legalism in order to gain leverage with political authorities (Sarat and Scheingold, 2006: 11).

After first discussing the case selection and methods, the second section theorizes the symbolic impact of NGO litigation and examines the role of the ECtHR inside Russia. The third and fourth sections analyze both case studies. Finally, the conclusion reviews the implications arising from the strategic choices of the NGOs and the impact of their litigation on Russia’s legal culture.

Methods and Case Selection

The two case studies, ADCM and CAT, are taken from a broader interview study with 40 human rights practitioners – NGO directors and lawyers – who assist victims of grave abuses, especially those from the two recent conflicts in Chechnya. These interviews were conducted by the author in Russia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Finland between 2009 and 2012, and usually took place in the NGOs’ offices. They were conducted in Russian, Dutch, or English. The interviewees’ names are kept anonymous throughout the article due to privacy reasons.

The interviews were conducted through ‘snowball sampling’, a method by which new respondents are recruited through recommendations of existing respondents. Because Russia’s human rights network is small, it was relatively straightforward to contact new informants. Although snowballing is a useful technique to generate interviews, it has been criticized for creating bias in sampling. Nevertheless, the purpose of this project is to inquire into the various litigation practices of a small network of lawyers working for Russian NGOs and was not intended to sample a large population.

The two NGOs were selected on the basis of four factors. First, although both associations work in a major city, they represent applicants from other regions. Second, both NGOs work on fundamental human rights. NGOs are especially involved into successful claims with the Court on Article 2 (Right to life) or Article 3 (Prohibition of torture) of the Convention (Hodson, 2013: 268). Third, these are established projects that secured foreign funding, expertise, and qualified staff. Although the majority of Russian NGOs lodge complaints with the Court, repeated litigation remains an expensive affair to most. Finally, both NGOs try to fill a legal gap: The CAT attempts to find remedies at the local level for victims of torture and inhuman treatment, while the ADCM seeks to establish that discrimination can be the motivation for criminal conduct under Russian law.

Litigation, Legalism, and the ECtHR in Russia

The subsequent section theorizes, first, how NGOs mobilize Convention rights and its impact on the domestic level. Second, it discusses how NGO litigation developed within Russia’s legal culture.

Theorizing Legalism in Litigation Before the ECtHR

The literature on the Convention and Court revolves around three broad issues – the developing case law, how to resolve the increasing caseload, and the Court’s role in Europe – as to whether it should operate as a ‘constitutional court’ or to provide remedy to individuals (Greer, 2013: 150–151). One shortcoming of these predominant legal analyses is that they ignore the social context from which cases arise assuming that cases can be readily brought before the Court by individuals. These perspectives leave little scope to interpret the strategic aspirations and choices informing NGO litigation and its impact on the national level (Greer, 2013; Hodson, 2011: 32, 2013).

The development of the case law depends on the complaints brought before the Court. While individuals lodge most claims, NGOs are active litigants. Cichowski (2011: 95) maintains that although NGOs apply less than individuals, the quality is higher because of their strategic intent. Under strategic applications, we can include those cases that seek remedies for individuals but also pursue broader societal changes: to mend law enforcement practices, press for domestic policy changes, or open up access to the Court for marginalized communities (Cichowski, 2011; Hershkoff, 2005). Furthermore, litigation can affect disadvantaged groups across Europe, by expanding the scope of the European Convention (Cichowski, 2011: 78), or change institutional practices at the Court that grant access to greater numbers of applicants (Haddad, 2012).

For NGOs, the ECtHR is an international legal and symbolic force, holding a promise for domestic reform. Claire Moon (2012a: 880) argues that human rights organizations base their mandate on international law and classify atrocities and suffering according to their definitions in human rights law. International litigation operates through a legalistic framework: It aims to legitimize claims on the basis of the Convention as well as to expand the scope of rights to protect a larger group of disadvantaged people. Law becomes a basis for the promotion of more law; law ‘provides the answer to the question: “what can be done?”’ (Moon, 2012a: 880). Part of the attraction of legalism is that it appears to provide an impartial legal vocabulary that effects social change outside of politics (McEvoy, 2008). Scheingold (2004) has famously defined this as the ‘myth of rights’—the belief that rights exist outside of politics and that litigation can evoke a declaration of rights from courts that results into meaningful social change.

Academics disagree on the relation between international litigation and social change. Litigation can open up the access to claims on related violations (Cichowski, 2006; Hershkoff, 2005). For example, in her study on the European Court of Justice, Cichowski (2006) argues that litigation resulted into the sustained popular mobilization for the expansion of environmental and women’s rights. Moreover, a judgment of an international court has symbolic value beyond financial remedy: It highlights the violations and individual suffering to an international audience (Çalı, 2010). Bowring (2012: 760) for instance, suggests that an ECtHR judgment recognizes the accountability of the state, revealing, through a judgment, the ‘truth’ of what has happened to victims.

Other sociolegal scholars question the relation between social change and litigation, especially contributing this to legalism. For them, the relation between legalism and change is ambiguous for two reasons. First, can it empower marginalized communities when they are not active participants in the litigation process? The client often cannot influence the cause and selection of a case (Hodson, 2011). While Cichowski (2011) ascertained that litigation can affect popular mobilization for the expansion of rights, others argue that applicants are disempowered as they lack influence over the legal narrative (Anderson, 1993: 178; Bukovská, 2008; Hodson, 2011: 85; Merry, 1990; Mertus, 2000). Wilson (1997: 134) argues that human rights reporting decontextualizes events, sifting out victims’ stories to obtain objective legal facts. Second, the immediate goal of litigation before international courts – to incite domestic legal or policy change – is extinguished once the judgments need to be implemented; a process dependent on political bargaining (Anderson, 1993; McIntosh Sundstrom, 2012). Galanter (1981) famously posed that courts – the ECtHR included – are in a relatively weak position to enforce their rulings. For instance, despite the ECtHR’s mounting judgments on the Chechen conflicts, the Russian authorities pay out financial compensation to victims, yet do not fully investigate the violations (Lapitskaya, 2011; Sperling, 2009: 245). Kennedy (2002: 117–118) warns against legalistic optimism: The expansion of human rights does not equal emancipation in society. Law may treat the symptoms but has difficulties addressing the underlying political conditions that made violations possible (Moon, 2012a).

In sum, how the ECtHR’s judgments have an impact on the victims and on the domestic level remains rather opaque. Purely legal analyses of the Court cloud the context in which NGOs make strategic selections of applications to have an impact domestically. As such, this study follows McCann’s (2004: 519) assessment that ‘how law (and therefore lawyers) matters depends on the complex, often changing dynamics of context in which struggles occur’. The subsequent section discusses this context.

Litigation and the Contested Nature of the ECtHR in Russia

Historians of Russian legal culture commonly claim that the weakness of the rule of law results from a legal tradition in which law is an exclusive tool of governing (see Muravyeva, 2013, for an overview). Especially high-profile cases are under influence of the executive power through the so-called ‘telephone law’ (Ledeneva, 2006). Under the socialist legal system, individuals or organizations had little leverage to mobilize for a cause or in the public interest because the communist state defined the public interest from the top down (Rekosh, 2005). Goldston (2006: 493) adds that public interest litigation is a postcommunist phenomenon as ‘the idea of articulating an alternative, nongovernmental vision of the public interest through law was impossible’.

Studies of Russia’s legal culture – the way people in society think of law and what they expect from it (Friedman, 1990, in Kurkchiyan, 2009) – give a more complex picture. Although Goldston (2006) argues that the general distrust of citizens in the independency of domestic courts is problematic for public interest litigation in Eastern Europe, other scholars find that Russian citizens are vigorous litigants, despite their distrust in the legal system (Hendley, 2009; Kurkchiyan, 2009; Trochev, 2012). For instance, the National Ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, has to handle a vast amount of complaints annually – 54,000 in 2011 alone (Upolnomochennyi po Pravam Cheloveka v. Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2012: 7).

Chances of winning a complaint before the ECtHR, however, are bleak: The Court makes a ruling in just 2% of the Russian applications, usually after 4–7 years (ECtHR, 2011: 20). Even though chances of winning a complaint are minuscule, applying to the Court became for many Russians simply ‘writing to Strasbourg’ (Demeneva, 2003):

Maybe people have heard about [the Court], but they don’t know how to lodge an application. Many people just send applications to the Court in the form of simple letters. They are surprised there is no result […]. (Lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author)

Writing complaints (zhaloby) to power holders was a common practice in the Soviet Union (Bogdanova, 2006; Henry, 2009: 62, 2012). Complaints serve a means of political expression, ‘complaints (zhaloby) and appeals (obrashcheniia) […] are a familiar mode of action, unlike membership in non-governmental organizations; they provide cultural and political continuity […]’ (Henry, 2009: 62). As part of their legal culture, Russian citizens are litigious before domestic courts and often ‘adopt a legalistic approach to their problems’: while Russians distrust legal institutions they believe holding on to the idea that law and formality can solve their problems (Kurkchiyan, 2009: 354). Henry (2009: 63) adds that Russia’s political system may be more receptive to these legal complaints than to public protests as complaints appear nonpolitical.

Russian NGOs work in a growing hostile political environment in which state–society relationships are defined by labeling civil actors as enemies or allies of state interests (Salmenniemi, 2010). Controlling the behavior of civic organizations through law is by no means a new phenomenon in Russia (Human Rights Watch, 2008). Since 2005, the State Duma passed laws curtailing the activity of NGOs, criminalizing defamation, and imposing higher fines on participation in unsanctioned protests (Roberts, 2012). The law No. 121-FZ, or foreign agent law from July 13, 2012, stipulates that organizations receiving foreign financial support and engage into political activity should register as a foreign agent (inostrannyi agent) with the Ministry of Justice. The law defines political activity as participating ‘in organizing and implementing political actions aimed at influencing the decision-making by state bodies intended for the change of state policy pursued by them, as well as in the shaping of public opinion for the abovementioned purposes’ (Human Rights Watch, 2013: 14). For instance, in March 2013, law enforcement teams searched several international NGOs’ offices – Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – to inspect their funding sources. Only a handful of NGOs had registered as a ‘foreign agent’ by the beginning of 2014.

Moreover, applying to the ECtHR often leads to criticism from Russian officials. Some officials have publically criticized the Court of having a political bias against Russia (Preclik, 2012: 203). For example, in the landmark case of Konstantin Markin v. Russia, the Court criticizes the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in its argumentation that a parental leave in the armed forces can only be granted to female employees (ECtHR, 2012). The ECtHR’s opinion provoked a critique from Valery Zorkin, President of the Constitutional Court (Zorkin, 2010). Nevertheless, other CoE member states, such as the United Kingdom and Turkey, have equally criticized the Court’s interference into what they perceive as domestic affairs, paying the financial compensation but disregarding the reforms to prevent future violations (Çalı, 2010; Hillebrecht, 2012).⁶ The following two sections examine how two Russian NGOs have made their strategic choices and used legalism during their litigation before the Court in this political environment.

The CAT: Litigation and Advocacy for Domestic Remedies and Investigations

CAT works from the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast’, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Mari El Republic, the Chechen Republic, and Orenburg Oblast, representing victims of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment during police detention. In 2000, a group of human rights defenders established CAT in Nizhny Novgorod with ‘the purpose of exercising public control over the problem of torture application and violent treatment in Russia and granting professional legal and medical aid to torture victims’ (CAT, 2014a). On the international level, CAT reports before the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT). CAT’s ‘international protection department’ lodged 67 cases before the ECtHR (CAT, 2014b).

On April 22, 2013, the prosecutor warned CAT that the organization should register as a foreign agent with the Ministry of Justice according to the foreign agent law from 2012. Until then, CAT had always resisted registering as a foreign agent with the Ministry of Justice. Several international funds, among which The Open Society Institute, have funded the CAT over the past decade. In August 2013, the Kremlin reported that it will give financial support to foreign agents (The Moscow Times, 2013). CAT received its first financial support from the state (4 million rubles) since its establishment (Prusakov, 2013). It applied for the grant to cover costs of hiring lawyers, medical treatment of victims, and travel expenses. Chairman Igor Kalyapin, however, stresses that they remain independent as they are financed by seven to eight sources (Prusakov, 2013). Kalyapin argues that the Presidential grant was awarded to CAT due to the increased public and media attention to torture (Prusakov, 2013).⁷ The authorities might be interested in tying the organization closer to itself. Following the acceptance of the grant, newspaper Izvestiya reported that the recipients of the Presidential Grant, including CAT, were ready to stop their resistance to the foreign agent law (CAT, 2013). Kalyapin denied this on their website (CAT, 2013).

This section investigates how CAT (a) tries to find remedies on the domestic level through litigation before the ECtHR and (b) works on the implementation of the ECtHR’s judgments.

Finding Remedies for Torture: The ECtHR As a Stepping Stone to Domestic Settlements

Torture – inflicting intentional pain on others by state agents in order to extract information or confession – is one of the severest abuses under international law. Until 2013, the ECtHR found breaches of the prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3 of the Convention) on 622 accounts in cases against Russia (ECtHR, 2014). The majority of these breaches concern inhuman and degrading treatment (454) and a minority concerns torture (45). In 123 instances, the Court also found an ineffective investigation into the violation (ECtHR, 2014). Most of the instances of inhuman treatment come from prisoners who complain on the denial of medical treatment, the lack of hygiene, and overcrowding in their cells (Starzhenetskii, 2012).

Remedies for torture are scarce due to short limitation periods, nonenforcement of judgments, and high court fees (McGregor, 2012: 737–738). Litigation before the Court is time-consuming, delaying remedy further. Owing to these discouraging long procedures and obstacles, first at home and later with the ECtHR, the applicant loses interest in pursuing a remedy:

At first the victim, right after the incident, is eager to pursue justice […]. When all remedies have been exhausted, people often already do not care. The ECtHR does not demand any activity on behalf of the client. But naturally, for many of them it is the last hope. (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011, interview by author)

McGregor (2012: 739) argues that the impact of the Courts’ jurisprudence on remedies on the domestic level has been negligible; few cases before the ECtHR have challenged these obstacles. For that reason, CAT maintains an open selection procedure to clients to find a remedy at home without seeing the ECtHR as a substitute for domestic remedies. According to one lawyer, they not only work on strategic cases that illustrate systemic violations but also select applicants of ‘which the Court already has hundreds of decisions’ (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, 2011, interview by author). In his selection, the lawyer evaluates the applicants’ exhaustion of domestic remedies and his motivation for applying to the Court:

[…] people may mislead us; pursuing their own goals, for example to avoid criminal liability. Well, if the case is taken, we proceed to a so-called public investigation. (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, 2011, interview by author)

Assessing the applicant’s motivation and exhaustion of domestic remedies becomes essential as Russia attempts to stop applications to the Court by arguing that cases are inadmissible to the Court because of a failure to exhaust domestic remedies (Malfliet and Parmentier, 2010: 14; Preclik, 2012). McGregor contests that the admissibility rule of exhausting domestic remedies intends to assess the unavailability of remedies for victims at home. Ideally, the ‘exhaustion of local remedies rule operates as a procedural gatekeeper and is not concerned with rectifying the unavailability or inefficacy of such remedies […]’ (McGregor, 2012: 741). Furthermore, McGregor (2012: 741) doubts that states which do not want cases to be heard by the ECtHR would automatically improve their national remedies.

Yet claims before an international court have symbolic normative power on the relationships with the state (McCann, 2006: 29). It can give institutional access to the bargaining table, enabling NGOs to negotiate concessions from authorities (Sarat and Scheingold, 2006: 11). The increasing pressure of the mounting ECtHR appeals on the local authorities in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast’ resulted into a closer cooperation between authorities, legal experts, and the CAT. In her study on Russian NGO litigation before the Court, McIntosh Sundstrom (2012: 265) found that CAT and other Russian NGOs participate in policy advising on torture to, and trainings of, law enforcement officials. CAT gave several trainings for human rights activists on public investigation techniques and published a training manual on public investigations into allegations of torture (Dmitrievskii et al., 2012). McIntosh Sundstrom (2012: 265) reports that CAT’s director was appointed a position in the Public Consultation Council within the State Committee for Internal Affairs. According to CAT, the purpose of this cooperation is to seek remedies on the domestic level in communicated cases:

[The ECtHR] is an effective and already popular system. The state agencies already know. We often organize within the committee—even with the Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region—to discuss the current communicated cases of the European Court. This committee decides what can be done on the national level to prevent the case from going to the European Court […] It is practically another pressure-mechanism. (Lawyer, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011)

As the Court finds breaches of the Convention in most Russian appeals (94%) that end in a judgment, advocacy on communicated cases supplements litigation. McCann (2006: 22) noted that besides direct intervention of judges, threatened litigation shapes social interaction and bargaining relations as litigation can be costly (see also Epp, 1998: 9). According to one lawyer, settlements are beneficial for both the Russian authorities and the victim:

The applicant will lose its victim’s status. This is good not only for Russia, which will not be losing a case against itself; it is also good for the applicant who does not have to wait for a long time before the ECtHR rules compensation and apologies from the state. (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, 2011, interview by author)

McCann (2006: 29) argues that, fearing the loss of control in decision-making processes, authorities ‘have a stake in cutting potential losses by negotiated settlements of conflicts directly with reform activists’. It appears that Russian authorities open avenues to domestic recourse to relocate claims from the ECtHR to the local level to defuse international criticism.

Implementation: Provoking Criminal Lawsuits

In its decisions, the Court recommends individual and general measures to be taken by the respondent state. The first entails compensation or official apologies to the applicant, the latter reopening of an investigation, prosecution, or legal reforms. The Court, however, rarely formulates in specific terms what the respondent state should do to prevent future similar violations (Bowring, 2012: 765). Often, many years have passed between the violation and when authorities have to implement the ECtHR’s ruling: ‘after such a time, most evidence will already be lost and no hope is left that the case will be reopened […]’ (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, 2011, interview by author). While the lawyers underline the significance of international litigation, they assert that social change can only be achieved through domestic courts (Lawyer from Moscow, 2011, interview by author, see also Merlin, 2009). According to McGregor (2012: 738), the ECtHR provides the vital access to justice for individuals, but it ‘cannot substitute or lessen the need to correct the remedial framework at the national level’.

Although it is difficult to say whether the ECtHR had direct influence over this, in CAT’s cases before the ECtHR’s several criminal investigations were reopened. Between 2001 and 2013, CAT reports that 107 law enforcement officers were prosecuted in their cases and sentenced to terms of 2–7 years imprisonment (CAT, 2014b). For instance, in Mikheyev v. Russia, Aleksei Mikheyev complained that he was tortured by police officers who forced him to confess to the rape and murder of a female minor (ECtHR, 2006: para 3). Unable to endure the torture he broke free, jumped out of the window, and broke his spine on a parked motorcycle (ECtHR, 2006). The Court found Russia in violation of Article 3: on account of torture and lack of investigating the violation (ECtHR, 2006: para 135). The Court argued that, prior to Mikheyev’s claim with the ECtHR, the Russian criminal justice system was ‘incapable of providing accountability for the crimes law enforcement officials commit against detainees’ (Katmissky, 2007). Yet in January 2006, the Leninskyi District Court sentenced two officers of the criminal investigation police with sentences of 4 years for the inhuman treatment (Lenta.ru, 2006).

In contrast, in the Maslova and Nalbandov v. Russia application, the two applicants alleged to be victim of torture and ill-treatment during police detention, in particular rape, beatings, suffocation and running electric currents through one of the applicant’s earlobes (ECtHR, 2008). As the limitation periods of criminal prosecution expired, the case was not further investigated. The Court ruled unanimously that the Russian state had breached Article 3 of the Convention (ECtHR, 2008: 108). A lawyer concludes that ‘the case did not come before the courts and in 2009 the term to prosecute police officers expired. Of course she received compensation, but that was all’ (Lawyer from Nizhny Novgorod, 2011, interview by author, see the decision Maslova and Nalbandov v. Russia (European Court of Human Rights, 839/02), ECtHR, 2008).

In conclusion, CAT plays an ambiguous role: They are an NGO under scrutiny of the state but also welcomed as experts. It cooperates with local prosecutors, gives domestic trainings, and collaborates with the authorities in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast’ (McIntosh Sundstrom, 2012). They have received a Presidential Grant but are also under pressure to register as a foreign agent. Cooperating with the state enables them to seek domestic remedies instead of prolonging the legal way of the applicant to the ECtHR. Litigation before the Court is tailed by the implementation process and political bargaining to find remedies on the national level (McIntosh Sundstrom, 2012). While Bukovská (2008) states that within transnational litigation there ‘is obviously the conflict between the interest of clients and the goal one wants to achieve with the case’, the CAT employs an open selection procedure toward their clients that aims to maximize the chances of finding a remedy at the domestic level, instead of making Strasbourg a substitute for domestic justice.

The ADCM: Selection in Research-Driven Litigation

The ADCM, registered in St Petersburg in 2007, develops legal programs against the discrimination of Roma and other minorities. It works throughout Russia promoting the adoption of national anti-discrimination legislation as discrimination is rarely taken into consideration by Russian courts as a motivation of a criminal offense (lawyer from St Petersburg and NGO director, 2010, interviews by author). The ADCM litigates before the ECtHR on behalf of victims of racism or discrimination, segregation of Roma children in education, or physical violence against minorities. The activists submit reports – based on their own research – to the mechanisms of the UN (FIDH, 2012).

After distributing a coauthored report ‘Roma people, migrants, activists: victims of police arbitrariness’ at the session of the UNCAT in November 2012, the St Petersburg prosecutor initiated proceedings against ADCM. Failing its registration as a foreign agent, the Leninsky district court ruled that ADCM carried out activities of a foreign agent (ADCM, 2014a). At the moment of writing, ADCM appealed against this decision. In the end of December 2013, the organization announced on its website that it had to cease some of its activities, stating that ‘our work to protect vulnerable groups—Roma and migrants, various minorities, women and children—was deemed by the prosecutors to be worthy of real political repressions’ (ADCM, 2013).

This section investigates how ADCM has (a) selected applicants when authorities try to press applicants into withdrawing claims and (b) diffused research-based litigation on discrimination to Russia.

The Influence of State Pressure on Selecting Clients

Strategic litigation, based on extensive research and monitoring of violations, is expensive (Goldston, 2006: 497–498). The Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative has supported ADCM’s litigation project on discrimination before the ECtHR in Russia. Such support is important as previous studies have found that the application’s success depends on the practitioner’s participation into foreign expertise networks or the availability of financial resources (McIntosh Sundstrom, 2012). In fact, ADCM’s lawyers discuss ECtHR applications with their American sponsors before they were lodged with the Court (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author).

Hodson (2011) argues that foreign expertise and funding narrows the selection of clients and enlarges the distance between the victim and his representatives. Hodson (2011: 86) furthermore found that complaints lodged by NGOs are often the result of the NGO’s own active search to find suitable applicants. She ascertains that lawyers take an active role ‘to create a culture of human rights and to generate a litigious consciousness’ (Hodson, 2011: 86). A lawyer illustrates that it is ‘unrealistic for a client to come to my office with a dream case’ (lawyer, St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author)

Many Russian NGOs and different regions inform me on some potential cases. […] Sometimes we are getting information about some violations from the media or newspapers. Then I try to contact the victim myself to persuade them […] Basically, I am searching for clients myself. (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author).

Selecting and measuring human rights violations is part and parcel of human rights work; it is not a value-free exercise (Boukalas, 2013; Brysk, 1994; Tate, 2007). Only a few applications can be lodged with limited resources. Moreover, Bukovská (2008: 13) warns that ‘victims are often uneducated, with little or no understanding of the law, and assume a subordinated position with regard to tactics and strategy’. These critiques notwithstanding, in ADCM’s applications, the lawyer stresses that the applicants understand the strategic nature of the complaint and wish not only to pursue financial gains but to restore their ‘ethnic dignity’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author). Lawyers take an active role in informing the applicant on the legal nature of the complaint: ‘it is very important for me that my clients understand that because of their ethnicity they were subjected to torture or some other civil rights violations’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author).

Moreover, the pressure from local authorities has an effect on the selection of applicants. The lawyer has to predict any government pressure an applicant can face, ‘[I try to explain] “you must understand the Russian government can press you, can use any administrative procedures against you to take your case back”’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author). The Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE also noted the pressure on Russian lawyers and NGOs in their preparation of cases before the Court in its Resolution of October 2, 2007 (PACE, 2007: para 6). As a result of this potential danger, ADCM learned ‘to find some weak sides of the clients to understand what kind of problems we meet in the future […]’ (lawyer, St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author).

For example, in an application on the segregation of Roma children in Russian schools, the clients who brought the case before the domestic court were allegedly put under pressure by the local authorities:

Many of them did not legalize their houses. That is quite common in Russia, not only in respect to Roma. Under the Soviet regime many people did not understand that it is necessary to legalize their house and dacha [summer cottage]. So my clients told me: ‘unfortunately we would like to take our applications back because some people of the local administration told us that if we don’t do that, they will initiate procedures to demolish our houses […]’. Three of my clients legalized their houses and brought their cases to the Russian court. But I lost a lot of my clients […] (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author)

The lawyer – who was first unaware of the potential pressure – learned to predict possible obstacles when preparing a case before the Court: ‘when we began to work on similar cases in other regions I decided to refuse clients who have any problems with their criminal records or with their houses’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author).

In sum, the ADCM selects strategic applicants who wish to find a remedy beyond financial compensation. State pressure, often in the form of legal sanctions, can potentially exclude vulnerable victims from the litigation process. Furthermore, a strict selection allows the practitioner to lodge high-quality applications with the ECtHR and experiment with new strategies.

Developing Research: Finding Proof of ‘Ethnic Profiling’ at Checkpoints in the Northern Caucasus

Through ADCM’s international contacts, it managed to implement new methods in Russia to support their claims before the Court in proving discrimination. Case selection becomes especially important in these strategies – those that aim to affect broader social change or legal reform. NGOs often choose grave, illustrative abuses that indicate systemic human rights problems (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). Hodson (2013) argues that NGOs litigating before the Court are chiefly involved in successful appeals on fundamental rights, such as the right to life. While many people wish to litigate before the Court to find remedies for past abuses, the NGOs have long-term ambitions for the future to prevent similar violations (Sarat and Scheingold, 2006: 3). Although it offers marginalized communities to influence institutional policy making through opening up the access to justice (Hershkoff, 2005), other, more vulnerable, applicants with few resources are excluded.

One lawyer argues that ‘[an application should have the] possibility to change administrative or legal and judicial practices inside the country if we obtain a positive decision delivered by the ECtHR’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview with author). Here, the lawyer demonstrates his legalistic faith in the efficacy of the ECtHR’s rulings and their potential impact on domestic legal practices. These goals resonate with Scheingold’s ‘myth of rights’ – the belief in which court rulings are followed by political compliance and respect to law (Scheingold, 2004). Within this logic, a strategic case becomes a vehicle to address gaps in domestic legislation. Yet this legalistic idea of how law can contribute to tolerance and antidiscrimination easily spills into struggles over who has the legitimacy to define it (see Rekosh, 2005).

Litigation therefore often intertwines with awareness campaigns, advocacy work, and reporting to intergovernmental institutions (McCann, 2006). For instance, ADCM transferred testing techniques to prove discrimination, from the United States to Russia. Testing is a common technique to secure evidence of racial discrimination (Goldston, 2006: 513). To provide evidence in this case, an American research consultant – with experience of conducting testing research during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s on the discrimination in job applications of African-American citizens – designed and prepared the testing on the many checkpoints on the highway between Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria) and Grozny (Chechnya). ADCM used this method in their complaint in which an applicant alleges that he/she is often subjected to checks on this road.

In their application before the ECtHR, ADCM alleged that the checkpoints violate the freedom of movement of drivers between the two cities under the European Convention, violating Article 14 on the prohibition of discrimination: ‘at any check you can be subjected to different types of violations: bribes and different types of searches. Many people disappear after such checkpoints’ (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview with author). According to one lawyer, this research intended to collect proof on discrimination in an environment where discrimination is ignored by the court system as a motivation for an offense (Goldston, 2006):

It was very difficult for us to prove [ethnic profiling]. We decided, maybe for the first time in Russian history, to try and use testing. We hired four cars: two with federal numbers of other regions and two with Chechen number plates. We found that the Chechen cars have been stopped and searched five to seven times more than non-Chechen cars. (lawyer from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author)

ADCM used the consultant’s report in its application with the ECtHR, referring to the freedom of movement in Article 2, Protocol 4 to the Convention. Moreover, the application is supported by witness reports of three other Chechen citizens, reports of Amnesty International, briefings of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and other NGO shadow reports.

In the lawyer’s perspective applying to the Court serves as a warning sign to the authorities: ‘if [the government] doesn’t want to lose new cases, then it should pass a law on checkpoints according to the European Convention with a detailed procedure’. Another NGO representative adds that:

Russia prefers to pay [compensation] instead of changing the system […]. We are not only waiting for compensation to the [Roma] parents and their children, but we hope that the system will be changed. We use different ways: legal ways, courts, advocacy, meetings, and workshops, (NGO director from St Petersburg, 2010, interview by author)

The selection of cases is legitimized by the aim to address a legal gap or effect systemic change. There is an optimistic belief that a case will have an impact on law enforcement practices or will be the basis for the adoption of new legislation. Strategic litigation based on testing is a high investment; lawyers therefore make a careful selection of applicants. Despite the critique on the lack of involvement of clients in the litigation procedure (Bukovská, 2008), ADCM’s lawyers explain the strategic nature to their clients and ensure that the applicants’ understanding of law matches the NGO’s legal narrative (see also Van der Vet, 2012). They also exclude financial compensation as the only motivation to apply to the Court. This sustained interaction with the client also enables the lawyer to predict future obstacles or safeguard the client in the face of any potential threats from the government.

Conclusion

This study examined how practitioners manage their belief in law as a catalyst for legal change. The study argued that in a political environment where legalism counts a strong belief for nonpolitical action, but where law is also employed by the state as a restrictive instrument, NGOs have to engage into advocacy with local political elites or create new research strategies to supplement their international litigation. In this environment, public interest lawyers choose to adhere to legalism as this can, at some times, work as a political resource that provides access to the bargaining table with authorities (McCann, 2006).

The findings have two implications: First, for the study of legalism in human rights practice, and second, for the study of the impact of the ECtHR in Russia. First, legalism is not only a static faith in rights – it is a strategy employed by the human rights defender who mediates between the procedures of the ECtHR, the interests of the Russian state, and the wishes of the client (Van der Vet, 2012). The Russian authorities’ lack of willingness to implement judgments delays remedies further which pushes NGOs to seek intermediary solutions which are beneficial for both the state and the victim. One of the main critiques of legalism in human rights is that it constrains different narratives on suffering, silencing the victim’s voice. Furthermore, legalism ostensibly draws our attention away from the political context in which violations occur (Moon, 2012a; Wilson, 1997). This study partly agrees with these critiques but stresses that lawyers not only make dogmatic claims on rights but are sensitive to their own political context and needs of their clients: They often experiment how rights can be used to expand their potential protection (Kelly, 2011). Moreover, the responses from Russia’s civil society sector after the latest backlash against NGOs imply that the relation between law and politics in Russia is more complex than that law is solely a tool of politics. That human rights are political and social tools is self-evident. In Russia’s legal culture, however, litigation is favored over political participation as it appears nonpolitical (Hendley, 2009; Henry, 2012). Under the foreign agent law, NGOs are put in a position where international reporting alone can be cause for legal actions against them. NGOs have to maintain their position as nonpolitical actors. Keeping to a legalistic vocabulary may, hypothetically, be a protection measure.

Second, this study has further consequences on how we see the impact of litigation beyond its impact on the domestic policy level. As the majority of the studies on the Court focus on the development of the case law, they run the risk of ignoring issues on the access to justice: How applicants are selected and brought before the Court. In Russia’s increasingly restrictive political environment, lawyers select strong applicants who have a chance to win, yet this may also sideline more vulnerable applicants. Selecting applicants with cases that are likely to be successful becomes of vital concern to lawyers as a case might give leverage in negotiating concessions. Therefore, while litigation before the ECtHR appears as a final solution to individual suffering, it cures the symptoms of a selected few. As Russia implements the ECtHR’s judgments only partially, it remains unclear to which extent international litigation by itself can address the underlying context that made violations possible.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the members of the Finnish Graduate School for Russian and East European Studies, Markku Lonkila, Laura Lyytikäinen, and the two anonymous reviewers for their encouraging and valuable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Notes

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