About the lecture
Sami groups have been involved in numerous legal disputes on indigenous rights to land and natural resources in recent decades. This lecture will explore the use of legal strategies by Sami claimants from the perspective of socio-legal mobilization theory.
Why do Sami groups turn to litigation in courts to claim indigenous rights to land? What determines their success? And how do these legal disputes over land rights affect Sami communities and the societies in which they live?
These issues of Sami land rights litigation in Finland, Norway, and Sweden will be discussed in the lecture.
About the speaker
Johan Karlsson Schaffer is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer from the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights. His research focuses on the politics of human rights, legal mobilization, and judicial politics, particularly in Nordic countries. His ongoing research centers on the mobilization of rights claims made by civil society groups in courts to seek redress and bring about societal change. He is further interested in the evolving role of courts in policy-making.