Lawyers in a Postmodern World

by Cain, Maureen; Harrington, Christine B.

• ISBN13: 9780814715031
• ISBN10: 0814715036
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-05-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Are lawyers, by their very nature, agents of the state, of capital, of institutions of power? Or are there ways in which they can work constructively or transformatively for the disempowered, the working class, the underprivileged?Lawyers in a Postmodern World explores how lawyers actively create the forms of power which they and others deploy. Through engaging case studies, the book examines how lawyers work within and for powerful institutions and provides suggestions--both general and practical--for ways in which the practice of law can be made to work with and for the powerless.Individuals chapters address such subjects as the contradictions of radical law practice; legal work in South Africa; the economics and politics of negotiating justice; feminist legal scholarship and women's gendered lives; the overlapping worlds of law, business, and politics; theories of legal practice; and how lawyers are constitutive of gender relations.Contributing to the book are Maureen Cain (University of West Indies), Yves Dezalay (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Martha Fineman (Columbia University), Sue Lees (University of North London), Doreen McBarnet (Wolfson College, Oxford), Frank Munger (SUNY, Buffalo), Wilfried Scharf (University of Cape Town), Stuart Scheingold (University of Washington), David Sugarman (Lancaster University), and Sally Wheeler (University of Nottingham).

Table of Contents

List of contributors
Series editor's introduction
Introduction	p. 1
Understanding lawyering	p. 13
The symbol traders	p. 15
Outlining a theory of legal practice	p. 49
Constituting capital and the state	p. 71
Legal creativity: law, capital and legal avoidance	p. 73
Capital fractionalized: the role of insolvency practitioners in asset distribution	p. 85
Blurred boundaries: the overlapping worlds of law, business and politics	p. 105
Lawyers' work as constitutive of gender relations	p. 124
The forum should fit the fuss: the economics and politics of negotiated justice	p. 155
Towards prefigurative legal practices	p. 183
Miners and lawyers: law practice and class conflict in Appalachia 1872-1920	p. 185
Feminist legal scholarship and women's gendered lives	p. 229
Para-legals and prefiguration: working in black townships towards a post-apartheid South Africa	p. 247
The contradictions of radical law practice	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 286
Index	p. 310
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