scholarly journals Courtwatching: Visibility, Publicness, Witnessing and Embodiment in Legal Activism

Area ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Gill ◽  
Jo Hynes
Keyword(s):  
Legal Activism

Securing the Sasana through Law: Buddhist constitutionalism and Buddhist-interest litigation in Sri Lanka

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1966-2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN SCHONTHAL
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism

AbstractThis article examines the history and effects of Buddhist constitutionalism in Sri Lanka, by which is meant the inclusion of special protections and status for Buddhism in the island's 1972 and 1978 constitutions, alongside guarantees of general religious rights and other features of liberal constitutionalism. By analysing Sri Lankan constitutional disputes that have occurred since the 1970s, this article demonstrates how the ‘Buddhism Chapter’ of Sri Lanka's constitution has given citizens potent opportunities and incentives for transforming specific disagreements and political concerns into abstract contests over the nature of Buddhism and the state's obligations to protect it. Through this process, a culture of Buddhist legal activism and Buddhist-interest litigation has taken shape. This article also augments important theories about the work of ‘theocratic’ or religiously preferential constitutions and argues for an alternative, litigant-focused method of investigating them.

Lawyers and the Conservative Counterrevolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 1698-1728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Southworth
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Government ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Legal Advocacy ◽  
American Law ◽  
Roll Back ◽  
Conservative Turn

What roles have lawyers played in the conservative counterrevolution in US law and public policy? Two recent books, Jefferson Decker's The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government (2016), and Amanda Hollis-Brusky's Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution (2015), speak to the question. This essay explores how these books relate to a larger story of the conservative legal movement and the roles that lawyers and their organizations and networks have played in the conservative turn in American law and politics. It highlights four interrelated threads of the movement's development: creating a support structure for conservative legal advocacy; remaking the judiciary and holding judges accountable; generating, legitimizing, and disseminating ideas to support legal change; and embracing legal activism to roll back government. The essay then considers a continuing challenge for the movement: managing tensions among its several constituencies. Finally, it suggests how this story has played out in litigation to challenge campaign finance regulation.

Counterterrorism in American Civil Courts: The Role of Letelier v. Republic of Chile

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Alan McPherson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Augusto Pinochet ◽  
Minor Injuries ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Civil Courts

The very rarity of these situations makes the legislation all the more important. Samuel Buffone, lawyer for Isabel Letelier On September 21, 1976, former Chilean Ambassador and Minister Orlando Letelier drove to his job in Washington, DC, in his Chevelle, accompanied by his coworkers, Ronni Moffitt and Michael Moffitt. As the Chevelle veered off Massachusetts Avenue into Sheridan Circle, the bottom of the car exploded upward, blowing off Letelier's legs and killing him within minutes. A short time after that, at George Washington Hospital, Ronni Moffitt died from a severed carotid artery. Michael Moffitt, sitting in the back, survived with minor injuries. Most observers of the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which had overthrown Marxist President Salvador Allende in 1973 and jailed and then exiled Letelier, Allende's defense minister, pinned the crime on the Chilean despot, and the Departments of Justice and State came to the same conclusion within a few years. The assassination remains to this day the only instance of state-sponsored terrorism in Washington. In the 1970s and 1980s, it spawned several criminal lawsuits in the United States and Chile, the most important of which was not settled until 1995, and remnants of which continue to this day. In Chile, the case also inspired a wave of legal activism against impunity for human rights violations.

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