Courts across borders: The implications of judicial agency for human rights and democracy

The global expansion of human rights has shifted modes of political engagement in significant ways. This article analyzes this shift as one towards "judicial agency," where an increasingly dense web of legal rights mediated by judicial and administrative bodies enables the individual to bypass traditional democratic forms of political mobilization. Through this new mode of political engagement, litigants challenge legislative and executive authority as they cross organizational and even national boundaries through a "nesting process," seeking judicial ways through which they can restructure rules and norms over a range of issues. This development is particularly marked in the European Union.