Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities

1999 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Pierce ◽  
Austin Sarat ◽  
Stuart Scheingold
Keyword(s):  
Cause Lawyering ◽  
Professional Responsibilities ◽  
Political Commitments

Cause lawyers are alright: ideology works its magic on the cause

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-338
Author(s):  
Maria Aristodemou
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Cause Lawyering ◽  
Political Commitments

To paraphrase Barack Obama, cause lawyers aren’t supposed to make any money: ‘their poverty is proof of their integrity’ (Obama, 2007, p. 135). Integrity and its insignia are, of course, sought-after signifiers not only in the field of community organising that Obama was describing, but in all professions, not least that of cause lawyers that is the focus of this book. The Cultural Lives of Cause Lawyers is the fifth in a series of essays edited by Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold on the activities of cause lawyers. Previous collections set the scene for the nature and aims of cause lawyering, analysing their professional and political commitments in theory and in practice, and their relationship to the state and to social movements in a global era. It is a series that almost single-handedly, quickly and efficiently helped define, as well as develop, this exciting new field.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Free State ◽  
Regulatory Structure ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Political Commitments

The introduction sets out the arguments of Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State. It starts with the question of the intended audience for the book, discussing the implications for those with both personal and political commitments. It outlines the negative thesis against marriage offered in Part One, and the positive thesis in favour of an alternative regulatory structure in Part Two. It summarizes the contents of each chapter. It also includes a discussion of the book’s location within ideal and non-ideal theory.

Anarchist, Antisemit, Aufklärer? Vier Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Nietzsches Philosophie und Politik

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-311
Author(s):  
Paul Stephan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Four new publications provide an overview of the relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophical thought and his political commitments. Together they highlight the true complexity of Nietzsche’s politics, since some of his ideas can be adapted to anarchist and right-wing positions as much as, for instance, to Frankfurt School critical theory. At the same time, these contributions underscore the limitations of a strictly positivist, or philological approach, since any assessment of Nietzsche’s politics cannot be detached from the political faultlines of the present.

scholarly journals ‘Our legal responsibility…to intervene on behalf of the child’: Recognising public responsibilities for the medical treatment of children

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
Jo Bridgeman
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Professional Responsibilities ◽  
Seriously Ill

This article argues for recognition of public responsibilities to protect the welfare of children with respect to decisions affecting their health and medical treatment. As the quote in the title of this article, from David Plank, the Director of Social Services responsible for bringing the case of Baby Alexandra before the courts, identifies, early cases concerning children’s medical treatment were brought by local authorities to determine responsibilities to protect the welfare of children. In cases such as Re B (1981), Re J (1990) and Re W (1992), the court was asked not only to determine the child’s best interests but also to clarify the duties of the local authority, Trust, court and child’s parents to the child. The respective duties established apply to all involved in cases brought before the courts on the question of a child’s future medical treatment, whether or not the child is in the care of the state. Recent cases concerning the medical treatment of seriously ill children have involved claims of parental authority to determine the care of their child. To the contrary, this article argues that court involvement is required when parents are disagreed with the child’s treating doctors over the child’s medical treatment because of public as well as parental and professional responsibilities for the welfare of all children.

scholarly journals Fighting Words: Pro-Choice Cause Lawyering, Legal-Framing Innovations, and Hostile Political-Legal Contexts

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Holly J. McCammon ◽  
Cathryn Beeson-Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Cause Lawyering ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Abortion Access ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Pro Choice

Drawing on social-movement and sociolegal theorizing, we investigate legal-framing innovations in the briefs of reproductive-rights cause lawyers in prominent US Supreme Court abortion cases. Our results show that pro-choice activist attorneys engage in innovative women’s-rights framing when the political-legal context is more resistant to abortion rights for women, that is, when the political-legal opportunity structure is generally closed to reproductive-rights activism. We consider reproductive-rights framing in three types of pivotal abortion cases over the last half-century: challenges to limitations on public funding of abortion, challenges to regulations that include multiple restrictions on abortion access, and challenges to bans on second-trimester abortions. Our analysis proceeds both qualitatively and quantitatively, with close reading of the briefs to distill the main women’s-rights frames, a count analysis using text mining to examine use of the frames in the briefs, and assessment of the political-judicial context to discern its influence on cause-lawyer legal framing. We conclude by theorizing the importance of the broader political-legal context in understanding cause-lawyer legal-framing innovations.

On the beginning of the world: dominance feminism, afropessimism and the meanings of gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 146470012110340
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Nash
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Commitments

Dominance feminism and afropessimist theory, despite their critical appearances three decades apart, are undergirded by similar rhetorical strategies, political commitments and argumentative moves. This is the case even as afropessimism’s citational trajectory rarely invokes dominance feminism, and often positions itself as a critique of feminism’s imagined conception of gender as white, one that is thought to be most emphatically announced in the work of scholars like MacKinnon who invest in a gender binary, and in women’s oppressed location in this binary. In this article, I insist on reading dominance feminism and afropessimism together. In so doing, I aspire to challenge afropessimism’s prevailing conception of gender, revealing that while it is often critical of feminist conceptions of gender – particularly conceptualisations of gender that are thought to insist on the shared experiences and positions of women – it actually relies on similar argumentative moves, and even rhetorical seductions, as dominance feminism.

Making Space: A Gay-Straight Alliance's Fight to Build Inclusive Environments

2013 ◽  
Vol 115 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ross Collin
Keyword(s):  
Student Activism ◽  
Bulletin Board ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
Document Collection ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Study Participants

Background Education researchers are paying increasing attention to student activism and to the social production of school spaces. Few studies, however, have brought these two concerns together to examine how student activists work to rebuild school spaces in line with their political commitments. In the present study, I address this gap at the intersection of two important research trends. Purpose I examine how a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) endeavored to build its school as an inclusive environment open to students of different sexual orientations. Focusing on the semiotic dimension of spatial production, I investigate how a conflict over a sign on the GSA's bulletin board functioned as one front in an ongoing struggle to produce the school's main hallway as a particular kind of space. As signs and constructions of space may be interpreted in different manners, I provide alternate ways of reading the conflict. Setting The setting for this study is a school serving a racially diverse, working class neighborhood in a major city in the Northeastern United States. Participants The participants were members of their school's GSA. Research Design This is a qualitative site-based investigation. I collected data by using ethnographic tools including observation, interviewing, and document collection. Specifically, I sought to gather data on different actors’ different understandings of the conflict over the bulletin board. I analyzed data by using methods of naturalistic qualitative analysis and semiotics-focused discourse analysis. Findings Study participants read the conflict over the bulletin board in different manners. Each reading construed the conflict as (re)building school spaces in particular ways. Crucially, each construction either validated or invalidated LGBTIQ identities in the space of the school. Conclusions No one reading of the conflict and no one construction of the space of the school were necessarily “conclusive” or “correct.” Rather, the meaning of the conflict and the features of school space were struggled over and negotiated by actors at the school. These struggles highlight how conflicts over meaning are often disagreements over the construction and inhabitance of social spaces. In light of these findings, researchers should expand their analyses of student activism to consider how, through semiotic activity, activists work to rebuild and act in school spaces. Furthermore, researchers should produce studies helpful to activists working to build schools as more just and inclusive environments.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document