PolicyLink -- Advocating for Change - Litigation: Leveraging and Maintaining Power in the Process

What Is It?

Litigation is taking someone to court for violating the law. Simply put: it’s filing a lawsuit.

Suits can be filed in different forums and in varying types. Suits are litigated in either federal or state courts; they can be criminal or civil; they can be filed by private parties or public entities; they can involve one person or many; and can result in a range of consequences and remedies: monetary compensation, mandated policy change, criminal penalties. More on this later in Assessing your legal options.

This section focuses primarily on the civil (rather than criminal) litigation process to achieve policy reform (rather than monetary compensation).

Why Use It?

It gives you a hammer to mandate change. Whether you take your case to trial and get a court order or reach a court-approved settlement before trial, litigation offers the prospect of receiving a binding remedy backed by the authority and supervision of the courts.

When to Use It?

You can accomplish a variety of goals with litigation. Use it to:

Get documents and information. More on this in Getting access to public records and proceedings in the Getting the Facts section.
Get you to the negotiating table. The threat of litigation—and the time and expense of a protracted legal battle—can sometimes start a dialogue where one has been rejected in the past. (A word of caution: don’t abuse the threat of litigation. If you do not have the intention or capacity to follow through on it, do not raise the possibility. It hurts your credibility and your effort.)
Get individual policies changed or achieve sweeping reforms.
Get someone to do something she or he should be doing but is not. It could be complying with a law you helped to enact or a consent decree you helped to negotiate.

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