Cause Lawyering Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities

by Sarat, Austin; Scheingold, Stuart

• ISBN13: 9780195113204
• ISBN10: 0195113209
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Why do some lawyers devote themselves to a given social movement or political cause? How are such deeds of individual commitment and personal belief justly executed, given the ideals of disinterested professional service to which lawyers are (in theory, at least) supposed to adhere? What can we learn from such lawyers about the relationship between law and politics? Cause Lawyering is a wise and varied collection of responses to these questions, featuring a number of distinguished legal scholars concerned with anti-poverty lawyers, lawyers who work against capital punishment, immigration lawyers, and other lawyers working to end oppression. Editors Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold have assembled here a valuable cross-national portrait of lawyers compelled to sacrifice financial gain so as to use their legal skills in the promotion of a more just society. These telling and important essays fully explore the relationship between cause lawyering and the organized legal professions of many different countries--the US, England, South Africa, Israel, Cuba, and so forth. They describe the utility of law as a resource in political struggles and, conversely, highlight the constraints under which lawyers necessarily operate when they turn to politics. Some provide broad theoretical overviews; others present rich case studies. Advancing a fundamental argument about the very nature of the legal profession, this book explains the strategies that cause lawyers deploy, as well as the challenges they face in trying to be legally astute and effective while remaining politically devoted and aware. Although it is a controversial way of practicing law, cause lawyering, as explicated in the essays in this volume, is indeed indispensable to the legitimization of professional authority.

Author Biography

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He has written and edited many books and articles on the theory and practice of law, including Race, Law, and Culture (OUP, 1997) and Divorce Lawyers and Their Clients (OUP, 1995).
Stuart Scheingold is Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Politics of Street Crime (1991) and The Politics of Law and Order (1984), among other books.

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Cause Lawyering and the Reproduction of Professional Authority: An Introduction	3	(28)
Austin Sarat
Stuart Scheingold
I. Contexts and Conditions of Cause Lawyering
The Causes of Cause Lawyering: Toward an Understanding of the Motivation and Commitment of Social Justice Lawyers	31	(38)
Carrie Menkel-Meadow
Speaking Law to Power: Occasions for Cause Lawyering	69	(49)
Richard Abel
The Struggle to Politicize Legal Practice: A Case Study of Left-Activist Lawyering in Seattle	118	(33)
Stuart Scheingold
II. Cause Lawyering and the Organization of Practice
Norris, Schmidt, Green, Harris, Higginbotham & Associates: The Sociolegal Import of Philadelphia Cause Lawyers	151	(30)
Aaron Porter
Still Trying: Cause Lawyering for the Poor and Disadvantaged in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	181	(20)
John Kilwein
Critical Lawyers: Social Justice and the Structures of Private Practice	201	(26)
Louise Trubek
M. Elizabeth Kransberger
Destruction of Houses and Construction of a Cause: Lawyers and Bedouins in the Israeli Courts	227	(34)
Ronen Shamir
Sara Chinski
III. Strategies of Cause Lawyering under Liberal Legalism
Rethinking Law's ``Allurements'': A Relational Analysis of Social Movement Lawyers in the United States	261	(32)
Michael McCann
Helena Silverstein
Caring about Individual Cases: Immigration Lawyering in Britain	293	(24)
Susan Sterett
Between (the Presence of) Violence and (the Possibility of) Justice: Lawyering against Capital Punishment	317	(32)
Austin Sarat
IV. The Possibilities of Cause Lawyering beyond Liberal Legalism
Cause Lawyering in the Third World	349	(82)
Stephen Ellmann
Lawyers' Causes in Indonesia and Malaysia	431	(22)
Daniel Lev
Attorneys for the People, Attorneys for the Land: The Emergence of Cause Lawyering in the Israeli-Occupied Territories	453	(34)
George Bisharat
Cause Lawyers and Social Movements: A Comparative Perspective on Democratic Change in Argentina and Brazil	487	(36)
Stephen Meili
All or Nothing: An Inquiry into the (Im)Possibility of Cause Lawyering under Cuban Socialism	523	(24)
Raymond Michalowski
Select Bibliography	547	(5)
Index	552