Cause Lawyers and Social Movements

by Austin Sarat (Editor), Stuart A. Scheingold (Editor)

Cause Lawyers and Social Movements seeks to reorient scholarship on cause lawyers, inviting scholars to think about cause lawyering from the perspective of those political activists with whom cause lawyers work and whom they seek to serve. It demonstrates that while all cause lawyering cuts against the grain of conventional understandings of legal practice and professionalism, social movement lawyering poses distinctively thorny problems. The editors and authors of this volume explore the following What do cause lawyers do for, and to, social movements? How, when, and why do social movements turn to and use lawyers and legal strategies? Does their use of lawyers and legal strategies advance or constrain the achievement of their goals? And, how do movements shape the lawyers who serve them and how do lawyers shape the movements?

Genres: Law

356 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2006

About the author

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College.