Lifting the Veil of High-Profile Cases: Rethinking Empirical Approaches to Strategic Litigation

Much of the scholarly literature on strategic litigation by interest groups relies explicitly or implicitly on a limited set of high-profile cases, particularly in areas such as climate change and human rights. Yet it remains unclear whether these widely publicised cases are representative of the broader landscape of litigation pursued by interest groups. This article argues that prevailing understandings of strategic litigation are shaped by a narrow empirical basis and by the methodological choices underpinning existing research, which is dominated by qualitative, small–N studies centred on prominent disputes. As a result, broader patterns in the nature, frequency and distribution of strategic litigation remain largely unexplored. To address this limitation, the article develops an interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative approach that shifts the unit of analysis from emblematic cases or specific organisations to judicial decisions involving interest groups across legal domains. Using the Netherlands as an empirical laboratory, it demonstrates how a judgment–based mapping strategy can generate a more comprehensive, systematic and empirically grounded understanding of strategic litigation by interest groups, by expanding the methodological toolkit available for its study.