The "defamation backlash": Law and the feminist movement in Pakistan

Against the backdrop of the global #MeToo movement, we engage with questions regarding the constitutive role of law in the contemporary feminist movement in Pakistan. Why has the new wave of the feminist movement not leveraged the existing ‘legal opportunity structure’ (LOS)? What explains the movement’s skepticism of the law at a critical juncture that otherwise looks ripe for legal mobilization? And how is legal backlash reconstituting the terms of the movement’s relationship with the law? We make two theoretical observations on the contingencies surrounding legal mobilization in social movements. First, trust in the law and legal processes may be more important factors in determining the nature and extent of legal mobilization than the existence of a LOS. Second, in contexts where law is oftentimes an instrument for abuse of power, lack of integration of legal strategy into broader movement politics can be a source of backlash. The utility of legal mobilization for social movements is both a matter of assessing the law’s potential for positive outcomes for social change, and anticipating law as backlash.