Inequality and the Human Right to Tuition-Free Higher Education: Mobilizing Human Rights Law in the German Movement against Tuition Fees

Why do activists employ international human rights law in domestic policy disputes and to what effect? Can international human rights law play an important role in cases where its direct application and justiciability by domestic courts is questionable? This study considers these questions in the area of socioeconomic rights by analyzing the mobilization of human rights law in the German social movement against tuition fees. Whereas legal mobilization theory is broadly concerned with the invocation of law on behalf of political demands, this article emphasizes discursive opportunity structures and vernacularization to make sense of which rights are adopted, why, and with what impact. I draw on content analysis of movement and political party documents, court decisions, and news reports as well as semi-structured interviews and participant observation. I find that activists in Germany were not naive about human rights. Instead, activists invoked human rights to resist political elites’ framing of education as a private good and students as consumers and to broaden the issue to include social inclusion and justice throughout the German education system. The mobilization of human rights law also was an effective means by which activists generated media attention and pressured politicians.