Andrew Boon
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195141177
- eISBN:
- 9780199871391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195141172.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
The neoliberal agenda initiated under the Thatcher government had a major impact on the legal profession in the U.K., by dismantling its protective practices, and by substantially reducing the legal ...
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The neoliberal agenda initiated under the Thatcher government had a major impact on the legal profession in the U.K., by dismantling its protective practices, and by substantially reducing the legal aid budget as part of its assault on welfare expenditures. The legal profession saw this as derogation from its legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion, or erosion of its symbolic social capital, and responded by an increased focus on cause lawyering and by assuming a greater burden of pro bono work.Less
The neoliberal agenda initiated under the Thatcher government had a major impact on the legal profession in the U.K., by dismantling its protective practices, and by substantially reducing the legal aid budget as part of its assault on welfare expenditures. The legal profession saw this as derogation from its legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion, or erosion of its symbolic social capital, and responded by an increased focus on cause lawyering and by assuming a greater burden of pro bono work.
FRANK S. BLOCH and MARY ANNE NOONE
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195381146
- eISBN:
- 9780199869305
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381146.003.0010
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
This chapter explores the connection in many countries of the world between the provision of legal aid services, including legal representation, advice and assistance, community legal education, and ...
More
This chapter explores the connection in many countries of the world between the provision of legal aid services, including legal representation, advice and assistance, community legal education, and law reform activities, and the establishment of clinical programs. It outlines the development of modern legal aid schemes in the context of the access to justice movement of the 1960s and 1970s, details the relationship between early clinical programs and legal aid services, and analyzes different models for delivering legal services in a law school legal aid clinic. It also examines the transformative potential in legal aid-based clinical legal education programs relative to their two constituencies: the communities they serve and the students they teach. The chapter concludes that redressing injustice and furthering equality before the law must remain a consistent theme and overwhelming concern in legal aid clinics around the world.Less
This chapter explores the connection in many countries of the world between the provision of legal aid services, including legal representation, advice and assistance, community legal education, and law reform activities, and the establishment of clinical programs. It outlines the development of modern legal aid schemes in the context of the access to justice movement of the 1960s and 1970s, details the relationship between early clinical programs and legal aid services, and analyzes different models for delivering legal services in a law school legal aid clinic. It also examines the transformative potential in legal aid-based clinical legal education programs relative to their two constituencies: the communities they serve and the students they teach. The chapter concludes that redressing injustice and furthering equality before the law must remain a consistent theme and overwhelming concern in legal aid clinics around the world.
RICHARD L. ABEL
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198260349
- eISBN:
- 9780191682094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260349.003.0007
- Subject:
- Law, Legal Profession and Ethics
The classic professions — law and medicine — presented themselves as honoratiores, indifferent to material reward. Clients and patients were lucky to get their services. The rapid accumulation of ...
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The classic professions — law and medicine — presented themselves as honoratiores, indifferent to material reward. Clients and patients were lucky to get their services. The rapid accumulation of capital and growth of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century stimulated demand for the emergent modern legal professions. By the 1980s, however, these comfortable arrangements were unravelling. The expansion of academic legal education dramatically increased the number of law graduates. The extraordinary increase in divorces from 38,000 in 1951 to 176,000 in 1981 explained much of the jump in civil legal aid certificates from 38,000 to 270,000. Between 1970 and 1983, the civil legal aid budget grew tenfold and the criminal more than twentyfold. Legal aid transformed the relationship between lawyers and clients from a neo-classical market in which no consumer could influence price or quality to something more monopsonistic.Less
The classic professions — law and medicine — presented themselves as honoratiores, indifferent to material reward. Clients and patients were lucky to get their services. The rapid accumulation of capital and growth of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century stimulated demand for the emergent modern legal professions. By the 1980s, however, these comfortable arrangements were unravelling. The expansion of academic legal education dramatically increased the number of law graduates. The extraordinary increase in divorces from 38,000 in 1951 to 176,000 in 1981 explained much of the jump in civil legal aid certificates from 38,000 to 270,000. Between 1970 and 1983, the civil legal aid budget grew tenfold and the criminal more than twentyfold. Legal aid transformed the relationship between lawyers and clients from a neo-classical market in which no consumer could influence price or quality to something more monopsonistic.
Frank S. Bloch (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195381146
- eISBN:
- 9780199869305
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381146.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
This book describes the central concepts, goals, and methods of clinical legal education from a global perspective, with a particular emphasis on its social justice mission. Certain common features ...
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This book describes the central concepts, goals, and methods of clinical legal education from a global perspective, with a particular emphasis on its social justice mission. Certain common features have contributed to clinical legal education's growing influence around the world, most notably its focus on lawyering skills and professional values. Even so, law school clinics vary considerably from country to country due to differences in legal systems and professional and academic cultures that have led to the development of a variety of distinctive national and regional approaches to clinical education. The book also examines clinical legal education's commitment to reform the legal academy and the legal profession, and charts its future role in educating lawyers for social justice. It argues that an emerging global clinical movement is playing an increasingly important role in educating lawyers worldwide, and that it can advance social justice through legal education. The most common model is a law school-based legal aid clinic that offers law students the opportunity to gain “real world” practical experience by working with clinical faculty to address legal problems in the community. The book consists of three parts: Part 1 explores the global reach of clinical legal education, including descriptions of programs from every region of the world; Part 2 discusses the justice mission of global clinical education and the various ways that clinical programs advance the cause of social justice around the world; Part 3 looks at the global clinical movement, with analyses of its various dimensions and its capacity to advance social justice through socially relevant legal education.Less
This book describes the central concepts, goals, and methods of clinical legal education from a global perspective, with a particular emphasis on its social justice mission. Certain common features have contributed to clinical legal education's growing influence around the world, most notably its focus on lawyering skills and professional values. Even so, law school clinics vary considerably from country to country due to differences in legal systems and professional and academic cultures that have led to the development of a variety of distinctive national and regional approaches to clinical education. The book also examines clinical legal education's commitment to reform the legal academy and the legal profession, and charts its future role in educating lawyers for social justice. It argues that an emerging global clinical movement is playing an increasingly important role in educating lawyers worldwide, and that it can advance social justice through legal education. The most common model is a law school-based legal aid clinic that offers law students the opportunity to gain “real world” practical experience by working with clinical faculty to address legal problems in the community. The book consists of three parts: Part 1 explores the global reach of clinical legal education, including descriptions of programs from every region of the world; Part 2 discusses the justice mission of global clinical education and the various ways that clinical programs advance the cause of social justice around the world; Part 3 looks at the global clinical movement, with analyses of its various dimensions and its capacity to advance social justice through socially relevant legal education.
Henning Grunwald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199609048
- eISBN:
- 9780191744280
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609048.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
What role did the courts play in the demise of Germany's first democracy and Hitler's rise to power? This book challenges the orthodox interpretation of Weimar political justice. It argues that an ...
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What role did the courts play in the demise of Germany's first democracy and Hitler's rise to power? This book challenges the orthodox interpretation of Weimar political justice. It argues that an exclusive focus on reactionary judges and a preoccupation with number-crunching verdicts has obscured precisely that aspect of trials most fascinating to contemporary observers: its drama. Drawing on untapped sources and material previously inaccessible in English, it shows how an innovative group of party lawyers transformed dry legal proceedings into spectacular ideological clashes. Supported by powerful party legal offices (hitherto almost entirely disregarded), they developed a sophisticated repertoire of techniques at the intersection of criminal law, politics, and public relations. Harnessing the emotional appeal of tens of thousands of trials, Communists and (emulating them) National Socialist institutionalized party legal aid in order to build their ideological communities. Defendants turned into martyrs, trials into performances of ideological self-sacrifice, and the courtroom into a ‘revolutionary stage’, as one prominent party lawyer put it. This political justice as ‘revolutionary stage’ powerfully impacted Weimar political culture. This book's argument about the theatricality of justice helps explain Weimar's demise but transcends interwar Germany. Trials were compelling not because they offered instruction about the revolutionary struggle, but because in a sense they were the revolutionary struggle, admittedly for the time being played out in the grit-your-teeth, clench-your-fist mode of the theatrical ‘as if’. The ideological struggle, their message ran, left no room for fairness, no possibility of a ‘neutral platform’: justice was unattainable until the Republic was destroyed.Less
What role did the courts play in the demise of Germany's first democracy and Hitler's rise to power? This book challenges the orthodox interpretation of Weimar political justice. It argues that an exclusive focus on reactionary judges and a preoccupation with number-crunching verdicts has obscured precisely that aspect of trials most fascinating to contemporary observers: its drama. Drawing on untapped sources and material previously inaccessible in English, it shows how an innovative group of party lawyers transformed dry legal proceedings into spectacular ideological clashes. Supported by powerful party legal offices (hitherto almost entirely disregarded), they developed a sophisticated repertoire of techniques at the intersection of criminal law, politics, and public relations. Harnessing the emotional appeal of tens of thousands of trials, Communists and (emulating them) National Socialist institutionalized party legal aid in order to build their ideological communities. Defendants turned into martyrs, trials into performances of ideological self-sacrifice, and the courtroom into a ‘revolutionary stage’, as one prominent party lawyer put it. This political justice as ‘revolutionary stage’ powerfully impacted Weimar political culture. This book's argument about the theatricality of justice helps explain Weimar's demise but transcends interwar Germany. Trials were compelling not because they offered instruction about the revolutionary struggle, but because in a sense they were the revolutionary struggle, admittedly for the time being played out in the grit-your-teeth, clench-your-fist mode of the theatrical ‘as if’. The ideological struggle, their message ran, left no room for fairness, no possibility of a ‘neutral platform’: justice was unattainable until the Republic was destroyed.
RICHARD L. ABEL
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198260349
- eISBN:
- 9780191682094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260349.003.0008
- Subject:
- Law, Legal Profession and Ethics
Labour had equivocated on legal aid. As shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair declared that any attempt to slash the legal aid budget would be disastrous for the legal system and for the many ordinary ...
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Labour had equivocated on legal aid. As shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair declared that any attempt to slash the legal aid budget would be disastrous for the legal system and for the many ordinary citizens. Lord Irvine told 500 solicitors that Lord Mackay's 1995 Green Paper had the fingerprints of the treasury all over it but conceded Labour had no quick fixes and no new money. Anticipating the 1997 general election, Irvine promised at the September 1996 annual Bar conference to restore legal aid to the status of a public social service. Universal contributions were a ‘powerful deterrent’ to accepting legal aid. At the same time, Irvine did not rule out a budget cap, the hope was to have QCs' fees regulated. After the Labour landslide, the Solicitors Journal hoped the presence of seven lawyers in the Cabinet would be good news for the legal profession. Labour promised a less confrontational approach.Less
Labour had equivocated on legal aid. As shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair declared that any attempt to slash the legal aid budget would be disastrous for the legal system and for the many ordinary citizens. Lord Irvine told 500 solicitors that Lord Mackay's 1995 Green Paper had the fingerprints of the treasury all over it but conceded Labour had no quick fixes and no new money. Anticipating the 1997 general election, Irvine promised at the September 1996 annual Bar conference to restore legal aid to the status of a public social service. Universal contributions were a ‘powerful deterrent’ to accepting legal aid. At the same time, Irvine did not rule out a budget cap, the hope was to have QCs' fees regulated. After the Labour landslide, the Solicitors Journal hoped the presence of seven lawyers in the Cabinet would be good news for the legal profession. Labour promised a less confrontational approach.
Grunwald Henning
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199609048
- eISBN:
- 9780191744280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609048.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
The chapter is a history of the Communist Party legal organization, which funded, administered, and publicized tens of thousands of political trials. Despite their professions of ideological ...
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The chapter is a history of the Communist Party legal organization, which funded, administered, and publicized tens of thousands of political trials. Despite their professions of ideological discipline, harnessing the often volatile, headstrong and individualistic party lawyers to a coherent political strategy proved tricky. The Communist Party pioneered the standardization of legal aid and the propagandistic exploitation of trials by ingeniously combining both in one in-house law office. The highly innovative KPD party legal organization grew rapidly and enjoyed a high visibility both within the party and outside it. Matching lawyers and cases, it used legal aid to monitor trials and disseminate the party's message, discipline defendants, and build up selected cases into high-profile publicity campaigns. The celebrated trial and rehabilitation campaign of Max Hölz, the ‘Communist Robin Hood’, is the main case study.Less
The chapter is a history of the Communist Party legal organization, which funded, administered, and publicized tens of thousands of political trials. Despite their professions of ideological discipline, harnessing the often volatile, headstrong and individualistic party lawyers to a coherent political strategy proved tricky. The Communist Party pioneered the standardization of legal aid and the propagandistic exploitation of trials by ingeniously combining both in one in-house law office. The highly innovative KPD party legal organization grew rapidly and enjoyed a high visibility both within the party and outside it. Matching lawyers and cases, it used legal aid to monitor trials and disseminate the party's message, discipline defendants, and build up selected cases into high-profile publicity campaigns. The celebrated trial and rehabilitation campaign of Max Hölz, the ‘Communist Robin Hood’, is the main case study.
Richard L Abel
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198260349
- eISBN:
- 9780191682094
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198260349.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal Profession and Ethics
In the final decade of the twentieth century the legal profession witnessed profound changes. First the Conservatives sought to apply laissez-faire principles to the profession. Then Labour ...
More
In the final decade of the twentieth century the legal profession witnessed profound changes. First the Conservatives sought to apply laissez-faire principles to the profession. Then Labour transformed the legal aid scheme it had created half a century earlier. At the same time, the profession confronted cumulative changes in higher education and women's aspirations, internal and external competition, and dramatic fluctuations in demand. This book analyses the politics of professionalism, the struggles among individual producers (barristers, solicitors, foreign lawyers, accountants) and their associations, consumers (individual and corporate, public and private), and the state to shape the market for legal services by deploying economic, political, and rhetorical resources (including changing conceptions of professionalism). The profession had to respond to a greatly increased production of law graduates and the desire of lawyer mothers (and also fathers) to raise their families. It had to replace exclusivity with efforts to reflect the larger society (class, race, gender). The Bar needed to address challenges to its exclusive rights of audience from both solicitors and employed barristers and decide whether to retaliate by permitting direct access, thereby compromising its claim to be a consulting profession. Solicitors had to reconcile their invocation of market principles against the Bar with their resistance to corporate conveyancing and multidisciplinary practices. The government had to restrain a demand-led legal aid scheme; practitioners and their associations sought to pressure the government to expand eligibility and raise remuneration rates.Less
In the final decade of the twentieth century the legal profession witnessed profound changes. First the Conservatives sought to apply laissez-faire principles to the profession. Then Labour transformed the legal aid scheme it had created half a century earlier. At the same time, the profession confronted cumulative changes in higher education and women's aspirations, internal and external competition, and dramatic fluctuations in demand. This book analyses the politics of professionalism, the struggles among individual producers (barristers, solicitors, foreign lawyers, accountants) and their associations, consumers (individual and corporate, public and private), and the state to shape the market for legal services by deploying economic, political, and rhetorical resources (including changing conceptions of professionalism). The profession had to respond to a greatly increased production of law graduates and the desire of lawyer mothers (and also fathers) to raise their families. It had to replace exclusivity with efforts to reflect the larger society (class, race, gender). The Bar needed to address challenges to its exclusive rights of audience from both solicitors and employed barristers and decide whether to retaliate by permitting direct access, thereby compromising its claim to be a consulting profession. Solicitors had to reconcile their invocation of market principles against the Bar with their resistance to corporate conveyancing and multidisciplinary practices. The government had to restrain a demand-led legal aid scheme; practitioners and their associations sought to pressure the government to expand eligibility and raise remuneration rates.
DAVID MCQUOID-MASON, ERNEST OJUKWU, and GEORGE MUKUNDI WACHIRA
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195381146
- eISBN:
- 9780199869305
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381146.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
This chapter covers clinical legal education in Southern, East, and West Africa. It includes a short history of law clinics in each region, as well as an analysis of why the law clinics were needed ...
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This chapter covers clinical legal education in Southern, East, and West Africa. It includes a short history of law clinics in each region, as well as an analysis of why the law clinics were needed and a description the clinical programs' requirements and the types of training and evaluation used. In most African countries, university law clinics were established to provide legal services and access to justice for poor and marginalized communities, as well as to teach law students practical skills. As in the United States during the 1960s, the South African clinical movement in the 1970s was closely linked to access to justice and therefore “live client” clinics tend to be the norm. The chapter concludes that apart from educating law students in practical skills and social justice, law clinics can also play a crucial role in supplementing the paucity of legal aid services in most African countries.Less
This chapter covers clinical legal education in Southern, East, and West Africa. It includes a short history of law clinics in each region, as well as an analysis of why the law clinics were needed and a description the clinical programs' requirements and the types of training and evaluation used. In most African countries, university law clinics were established to provide legal services and access to justice for poor and marginalized communities, as well as to teach law students practical skills. As in the United States during the 1960s, the South African clinical movement in the 1970s was closely linked to access to justice and therefore “live client” clinics tend to be the norm. The chapter concludes that apart from educating law students in practical skills and social justice, law clinics can also play a crucial role in supplementing the paucity of legal aid services in most African countries.
CAI YANMIN and J. L. POTTENGER
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195381146
- eISBN:
- 9780199869305
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381146.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
This chapter discusses the development of clinical legal education in the People's Republic of China and the challenges it faces today. It describes China's legal, legal education, and legal aid ...
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This chapter discusses the development of clinical legal education in the People's Republic of China and the challenges it faces today. It describes China's legal, legal education, and legal aid systems, including their dramatic expansion since 1979 and the substantial political constraints on legal reform imposed by China's administrative-party state. It also offers a brief history of Chinese clinical legal education, including to the work of the Ford Foundation and China's leading national clinical organization, the Committee of Chinese Clinical Legal Educators (CCCLE), as well as an overview of current programs and descriptions of several universities' clinical programs. It presents examples of individual and group-representation labor rights cases, which are prominent in Chinese clinics. The chapter concludes by analyzing the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead, including future financing and better integration with both the legal academy and the legal profession—challenges that mirror those in other countries, including the United States.Less
This chapter discusses the development of clinical legal education in the People's Republic of China and the challenges it faces today. It describes China's legal, legal education, and legal aid systems, including their dramatic expansion since 1979 and the substantial political constraints on legal reform imposed by China's administrative-party state. It also offers a brief history of Chinese clinical legal education, including to the work of the Ford Foundation and China's leading national clinical organization, the Committee of Chinese Clinical Legal Educators (CCCLE), as well as an overview of current programs and descriptions of several universities' clinical programs. It presents examples of individual and group-representation labor rights cases, which are prominent in Chinese clinics. The chapter concludes by analyzing the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead, including future financing and better integration with both the legal academy and the legal profession—challenges that mirror those in other countries, including the United States.
