Strategies of Resistance in the Courthouse: The Case of the Belgian Field Liberation Movement

Focusing on the case of the 'Patatista 11' anti-GM activists from the Belgian Field Liberation Movement, this paper discusses defence strategies in civil law systems in terms of legal mobilization. I make two theoretical contributions to the study of social movements and the criminal law. The first is that, even in civil law systems where the finding of fact is itself uncontested- the defendants having openly announced and admitted their involvement - the defence has a number of strategic options, which cannot be simply 'read' from the legal opportunity structure: rather, they are developed through an interactive negotiation between collective identity, resources, and legal system properties on the one hand, and the information revealed through the interplay of the strategic choices made by the set of engaged actors on the other. The second is that the trial function as a process of 'fixing' rather than finding fact: in other words, even in civil law systems, even where the criminal act is itself uncontested, the trial serves to stabilise the motives and nature of the criminal act - and thus brings the action into political being.