This article examines the Puerto Rican legal mobilisations for the right to access public information through the lenses of activist-scholarship. Based on ethnographic research with Puerto Rican scholars, lawyers and civil society organisations, the article explores how they have used the legal system to demand greater transparency and accountability from the Puerto Rican government and the Federal Oversight and Management Board (FOMB). First, it engages with the efforts of Proyecto de Acceso a la Información, a law clinic and civil society organisation initiative aimed at securing access to public information, transparency and accountability in government. Second, it reflects on Sembrando Sentido’s efforts, an anti-corruption and transparency civil society organisation, to draft and enact a series of anti-corruption laws. These case studies illustrate how activist-scholarship shapes Puerto Rican society by using legal tools to challenge colonial legality and resist the imposition of neoliberal policies that exacerbate inequality and corruption.

This Article brings new perspectives on the well-known Viking and Laval cases, decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in December 2007, by studying the processes and modalities of the construction of this case law as a major defeat for social Europe. It demonstrates that the political and legal implications of these two rulings were socially constructed by a variety of European actors (especially trade unionists and academics specialising in labour law) rather than legally inscribed in the rulings. In doing so, the author defends a constructivist approach in the analysis of European case law, both contextual and processual. The Article is divided into two parts. The first retraces the pre-ruling construction of the Viking and Laval cases, and shows that trade union and academic actors as well as parliamentarians worked to construct the judgements on these cases as decisive landmarks for social Europe. The second part considers the process of interpretation of the rulings after they were delivered by the CJEU. It evidences the central role played by trade union and academic actors in promoting a critical reading of the rulings, arguing that the Court subordinated social rights to economic liberties. The Article concludes by showing that this interpretation has tended to become subject to consensus, to the extent that it is now European common sense.