Lawyers and Movements

While legal strategies are certainly important for social movements, mainstream research in the field has rarely addressed in depth their modes of interventions and the legal theorization as well as the practices behind them. This precious book offers a very rich, systematic and innovative approach to lawyers' roles in social movement advocacy, locating them within transformations in the political economy as well as the development of the profession." -Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore

Auteur
Scott L. Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He is faculty director of the Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, and a longtime member of the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.

Texte du rabat

In Lawyers and Social Movements, Scott L. Cummings explores the role of lawyers in social movements at a moment in which that role has taken center stage in American legal theory and practice. This book is a comprehensive analysis of how lawyers mobilize law to advance movement goals and what impact they have within liberal democracy. Cumimings' central contribution is to show how lawyers act as allies-and sometimes leaders-in struggles for transformative and enduring democratic change.

Résumé
An innovative approach for understanding how law matters in contemporary social movements that rise to meet the twin challenges of American democracy: promoting liberal values of equality and inclusion, while fortifying the rule of law itself. Fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, America confronts a new democratic reckoning. What role do-and should-lawyers play in strengthening collective action at this pivotal moment? In Lawyers and Movements, Scott L. Cummings offers an innovative answer to this age-old question, breaking from the legacy of legal liberalism to reveal the essential, yet underappreciated, work of lawyers in social struggle-redefining legal mobilization in transformative times. Building from a sweeping analysis of progressive legal theory and practice, Cummings challenges foundational critiques of lawyers as inaccurate and ill-suited to the current context. In response, he advances a new theory of legal mobilization in which control over law is at the heart of movements rising to meet the twin challenges of contemporary liberalism: promoting inclusion and equity, while fortifying democratic institutions. A call to radically rethink how lawyers contribute to progressive change, Lawyers and Movements asserts a timely challenge to democracy in crisis.

Contenu

• Preface

• Part One. Introduction

• ONE: Lawyers and Social Movements Now: Critical Traditions and New Directions

• Part Two. Integrated Advocacy: Movements in Progressive Legal Practice

• TWO: A History of Lawyers in Social Movements

• THREE: Movement Lawyering in the New Millennium

• Part Three. Divided Theory: Movements in Progressive Legal Thought

• FOUR: The Law-Politics Problem

• FIVE: Legal Liberalism and Its Discontents

• SIX: The Empirical Path of Law and Social Movements

• SEVEN: The Promise and Problems of Movement Liberalism

• Part Four. An Integrated Theory of Lawyers and Social Movements

• EIGHT: Division: Fault Lines and Fundamental Problems

• NINE: Synthesis: Integrated Theory for Integrated Advocacy

• Part Five. Applying Theory to Practice

• TEN: Reframing the Foundational Critiques

• ELEVEN; Rethinking the Progressive Canon

• Part Six. Conclusion

• TWELVE: Past as Future? Reclaiming Legal Liberalism in Illiberal Times

• Notes

• Bibliography

• Index