Suchergebnisse

The Constitution says that what's happening in the Senate right now is a trial. But it's no ordinary trial: As we're all now well aware, a Senate trial is a hybrid affair, part law and part politics.

What role do lawyers, as lawyers, play in the creation, development, and maintenance of the international legal order? This is an oddly underexplored question. It has become increasingly popular to look at the role various non-state actors--nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots activists, scientists, insurgent groups, among many others--play in the shaping of international law. It has also become common to talk in terms of the "disaggregated state," and of how various substate actors--central bankers, regulators, judges, and military personnel--shape international law and policy through their interactions with each other. Nor have international lawyers ever been particularly shy about their importance to international law. Oscar Schacter famously described "the professional community of international lawyers . though dispersed throughout the world and engaged in diverse occupations" as "a kind of invisible college dedicated to a common intellectual enterprise." Martti Koskenniemi has written that "[w]ithout international lawyers, there would have been no international law." The Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) even recognizes the "teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law." And yet, few have focused on the specific and unique role lawyers might play as state, non-state, and substate actors in the international system.

China underwent tremendous changes in social systems during the Republican period. Among these changes was the government's introduction into Chinese society of a new legal profession based on Western ideology. Relying mainly on Shanghai archival records, previous scholarship has suggested that, unlike the traditional litigation masters who had always been despised by the authorities, the new Chinese lawyers quickly rose to respectable social and economic status. However, the historical findings presented in the current article challenge this perception by showing that in a city with a more deeply rooted indigenous legal tradition and less influence from Western lawyers, as in Beijing, the new Chinese lawyers faced resistance from the legacy of the old legal culture that permeated the new system. For a considerable period of time after the establishment of the Republic, the people of Beijing still continued to hire unqualified, "phony" lawyers in lawsuits, and some of these phony lawyers had previously been litigation masters under the Qing dynasty. Although legal reform was instigated by the central government as a unified policy, its implementation was bound to vary in different regions according to the influence of the traditional legal culture. It is clear that the situation in Shanghai and other treaty ports does not represent the situation throughout the entire country, nor even in other coastal regions. Therefore, to make more sense of legal reform in China, one should evaluate the development of legal reform in a particular city or region against its social and ideological backdrop. This approach may provide insights not only into the legal reform of the Republican period, but also into the post-Mao era when once again a modern legal system based on the Western model has been introduced, this time within a socialist system. ; published_or_final_version

A report prepared for the Survey of the legal profession, under the auspices of the American Bar Association. ; Typewritten. ; Mode of access: Internet.

--I. The great seal. On military affairs. Lawyers on horseback. Houses and householders. Loves of the lawyers. Money. Costume and toilet.--II. Costume and toilet (continued). Music. Amateur theatricals. Political lawyers. Legal education. Mirth. At home: in court: and in society. Tempora mutantur. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Debates over the future of the civil service are usually couched in terms of a trade-off between accountability and impartiality. If that were all at stake, I would tend to take the accountability side, at least insofar as government lawyers are concerned. To put the matter in the larger framework so ably developed by my colleague Steve Calabresi in this symposium, government lawyers must serve as "advocates"and "ambassadors"for the incumbent Administration's political/legal viewpoints, and these roles surely require a strong dose of accountability-stronger than one ever gets from tenured lawyers. I have argued, however, that there should be another dimension to the debate: what might be called the trade-off between transience and stability. High level tenured lawyers bring a long-term perspective to legal problems that is lacking in political lawyers. This long-term perspective generates various forms of institutional capital associated with the values of predictability, consistency, protection of reliance interests, and respect for tradition. These values are especially important in matters of government. Government ultimately rests on coercion. With the threat of coercion in the background, legal arguments will be more persuasive if they are leavened with a healthy respect for continuity with the past. Thus, political lawyers will perform more effectively if they are backstopped by high-level tenured lawyers, who bring with them a natural tendency to promote continuity. This enhanced effectiveness applies, moreover, regardless of which function political lawyers are asked to perform-including advocating the President's constitutional vision.

This essay—the introductory chapter to a book that examines the powerful intellectual legacy of Richard Abel—frames a central question posed by Abel's scholarship: Is the professional project of lawyers a political one—defined by the protection and extension of fundamental rights and equality under law—or is it instead a commercial one—determined by lawyers' material interest in maximizing the return on their services? Do lawyers stand for justice? Or are they an impediment to its full realization? The essay offers two perspectives—one empirical and the other theoretical—on this fundamental "paradox of professionalism." The first charts the development of the U.S. system of institutionalized pro bono as an example of the increasing interdependence of lawyers' professional and commercial aims. One lesson to be drawn from this examination is that to the extent lawyers assimilate their political project (doing good) to their commercial one (doing well), commercial ends define the limits of what professional means can achieve—with profound consequences for the quantity and quality of justice served. Building off this case study of pro bono, the essay then suggests an approach to understanding legal professionalism that attends to its multiple meanings in practice, but also seeks to determine how the competing ideologies of professionalism ultimately shape the overall distribution of power. Toward this end, it rejects the standard binary formulation of the professional project—are lawyers a force for good or ill writ large?—and instead asks: Under what conditions do which lawyers advance which projects—and what are the consequences for social justice? This question constitutes the central inquiry of the book, which seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between lawyers' commercial aims and public aspirations. Drawing upon interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives, the book explores whether lawyers can transcend self-interest to meaningfully contribute to systems of political accountability, ethical advocacy, and distributional fairness. Its contributors, some of the world's leading scholars of the legal profession, offer evidence that while justice is possible, it is never complete. Ultimately, how much—and what type of—justice prevails depends on how lawyers respond to, and reshape, the political and economic conditions in which they practice. As the book demonstrates, the possibility of justice is diminished as lawyers pursue self-regulation in the service of power; it is enhanced when lawyers mobilize—in the political arena, workplace, and law school—to contest it.

Government lawyers can be broadly categorized as either political or civil service appointees. The political appointees constitute a thin layer at or near the top of the hierarchy of government lawyers. They include, most prominently, presidential appointees – "Officers of the United States" who must be nominated and confirmed by the Senate prior to their appointment. They also include a variety of lesser lawyers who are exempt from most of the civil service laws. Such exempt "inferior Officers" include, for example, the lawyers in the White House Counsel's office and so-called "Schedule C" lawyers who hold positions "of a confidential or policy-determining nature" scattered throughout the bureaucracy. The civil service lawyers form the much larger base of the hierarchy below the thin top layer. They shall be referred to here as "tenured lawyers," because, as in the case of tenured academics, they have an expectation of continued government employment unless and until they are terminated for cause following cumbersome due process formalities. These tenure rights, which are created by the civil service laws and regulations, do not confer the right to continue in any particular job or function. Tenured lawyers can be removed from their position if their agency is abolished or is subject to a reduction in force. Generally speaking, however, they cannot be fired, demoted, or have their pay reduced unless they have been proven guilty of some dereliction of duty.

Lawyers advertise to attract clients. Politicians advertise to attract voters. Businesses advertise to attract customers. All of these advertisers advertise with a common subtext: choose me, because I'm better than the rest. Hire me, vote for me, buy my product, and good things will happen. The message may be blunt, explicit, direct, linear. But often it is not. The bludgeon is not the tool of choice in modem mass advertising. The message, more commonly, is presented with subtlety, often merely suggested, often presented with indirection, irony, camp, or comedy. Information as such is not the point. The stuff of modern advertising is not information, but imagery. Advertisers sell imagery. The honest politician, compassionate for the common man and tough as nails on crime. The enterprising business, primed for the technologies of the new millennium, creative, responsive, ready and able to serve the customer's needs. And the lawyer, tough and aggressive, able to stand up to insurance companies and fight for the rights of the injured and wronged.

Un informe sobre el 5è. Congrés sobre Internet, Dret i Política organitzat per la UOC el juliol de 2009. L'autor, que va participar com a ponent en la conferència i va escriure un "blog en viu" durant els dos dies que va durar l'esdeveniment, examina algunes de les contribucions, reflexiona sobre el tema dels llocs d'establiment de xarxes socials ("a favor o en contra?") i explora els diferents enfocaments de les disciplines del dret i les ciències polítiques, suggerint que l'augment de la importància d'aquests llocs és un reflex que consideracions com la privacitat, la seguretat, el compromís polític i els drets d'autoria són objecte d'un debat públic necessari i interdisciplinari. ; A report on the 5th Internet, Law and Politics Conference hosted by the UOC in July 2009. The author, who attended the conference as a rapporteur and wrote a live blog' during the two-day event, reviews some of the contributions, reflects on the theme of social networking sites (pro or con'?) and explores the different approaches of the disciplines of law and political science, suggesting that the increased importance of such sites means that considerations such as privacy, security, political engagement and copyright are the subject of necessary and interdisciplinary public debate. ; Un informe sobre el 5.º Congreso sobre Internet, Derecho y Política organizado por la UOC en julio de 2009. El autor, que participó como ponente en la conferencia y escribió un blog en vivo durante los dos días que duró el evento, examina algunas de las contribuciones, reflexiona sobre el tema de los sitios de establecimiento de redes sociales ("¿a favor o en contra?") y explora los distintos enfoques de las disciplinas del derecho y las ciencias políticas, sugiriendo que el aumento de la importancia de estos sitios es un reflejo de que consideraciones como la privacidad, la seguridad, el compromiso político y los derechos de autoría son objeto de un debate público necesario e interdisciplinario.

International audience ; On 14 January 2011, after 23 years in power and a month of popular protest demanding his resignation, President Ben Ali fled Tunisia. Images of Tunisian lawyers demonstrating in their robes in front of the Ministry of the Interior, broadcast around the world on television and the web, made people think these lawyers had played a fundamental role in the protest movements that led to the fall of the authoritarian regime, which had ruled the country since Independence (1956). Although such a brief causal account does not tell the whole story, the fact remains that, due to their right of defence in judicial procedures, lawyers, more than any other profession, enjoy a close relationship between their function and politics. The socio-historical approach taken in this chapter demonstrates the extent to which professional facts may assume a political dimension. The profession had already shown a greater ability than other social groups to resist the regimes of Ben Ali and Habib Bourguiba ('the father of independence'), allowing it to benefit symbolically and materially from the fall of the Ben Ali regime.

International audience ; On 14 January 2011, after 23 years in power and a month of popular protest demanding his resignation, President Ben Ali fled Tunisia. Images of Tunisian lawyers demonstrating in their robes in front of the Ministry of the Interior, broadcast around the world on television and the web, made people think these lawyers had played a fundamental role in the protest movements that led to the fall of the authoritarian regime, which had ruled the country since Independence (1956). Although such a brief causal account does not tell the whole story, the fact remains that, due to their right of defence in judicial procedures, lawyers, more than any other profession, enjoy a close relationship between their function and politics. The socio-historical approach taken in this chapter demonstrates the extent to which professional facts may assume a political dimension. The profession had already shown a greater ability than other social groups to resist the regimes of Ben Ali and Habib Bourguiba ('the father of independence'), allowing it to benefit symbolically and materially from the fall of the Ben Ali regime.

There is a widely shared perception among lawyers, judges, and various public officials that government lawyers have greater responsibilities to serve the public interest than lawyers in private practice. This perception is reflected in judicial opinions, lawyer professional responsibility standards, and numerous other legal writings. Nonetheless, a number of academic critics have attacked what is described here as the "public interest serving" role for government attorneys. This Article provides a defense of the public interest serving role against its critics. While the critiques addressed are diverse, they often make the mistake of importing values from the context of private litigation into the quintessentially public context of government litigation. The Article concludes by offering three examples of the most common forms of government litigation—criminal prosecutions, lawsuits against executive branch agencies, and civil enforcement proceedings—in an effort to demonstrate how the public interest serving role ought to be pursued.

Attracting investment in agriculture has been a key policy goal of governments in the global south. Development partners have supported these policies. But what do governments hope to achieve by attracting investment in the agricultural sector? Why are companies interested in investing? What is in it for local communities? And what is the role of lawyers? This primer provides an introduction to some of the key issues that arise in the negotiation of contracts linked to investments in agriculture, and practical guidance for how to approach common issues. Section 1 of this primer outlines the typical goals of three important stakeholders – the government, companies, and communities who live on or near land on which a project will take place – along with the risks that each type of stakeholder faces. Section 2 discusses the role of contracts and lawyers, provides tips for negotiations, and includes resources for further reading.

Attracting investment in agriculture has been a key policy goal of governments in the global south. Development partners have supported these policies. But what do governments hope to achieve by attracting investment in the agricultural sector? Why are companies interested in investing? What is in it for local communities? And what is the role of lawyers? This primer provides an introduction to some of the key issues that arise in the negotiation of contracts linked to investments in agriculture, and practical guidance for how to approach common issues. Section 1 of this primer outlines the typical goals of three important stakeholders – the government, companies, and communities who live on or near land on which a project will take place – along with the risks that each type of stakeholder faces. Section 2 discusses the role of contracts and lawyers, provides tips for negotiations, and includes resources for further reading.