Dialogical lawyering for climate justice: a proposal from Latin America

Viveros Uehara T.; Vieira De Melo C.; Martinic M.; González-Serrano M.X. · Transnational Legal Theory (2026) · DOI: 10.1080/20414005.2026.2642524

Resumen

Mobilising law for climate justice in Latin America presents a paradox: legal advocacy often reflects the inequalities it seeks to dismantle. Operating within post-colonial and neoliberal contexts, legal professionals and frontline communities bring distinct habitus and motives into climate-related legal mobilisation, shaping which claims ultimately reach courts. This raises a key question: how can legal professionals advance climate justice without reproducing entrenched disparities? As climate litigation expands, addressing this paradox becomes increasingly pressing. The article introduces dialogical lawyering, an analytical concept grounded in participatory action research, autoethnography, and Latin American community lawyering. Informed by Freirean and Bourdieusian thought, it draws on the experiences of lawyers working with communities confronting extractivism in Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. Through critical dialogue, self-reflection, interdisciplinarity, co-creation, and transparency, this framework reimagines climate advocacy to address imbalances in cognition, time, space, and power, aligning legal practice with the normative ambitions of transformative constitutionalism.