Ann Southworth. “Professional Identity and Political Commitment among Lawyers for Conservative Causes.” In The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice. Eds. Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold, pp. 83-111. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2005.
This chapter explores the professional ideologies and levels of political commitment among lawyers who work for conservative and libertarian causes. It challenges the prevailing scholarly notion that “cause lawyering” is a phenomenon exclusive to the political left, arguing instead that conservative lawyers can also meet the criteria of cause lawyers—those who engage in advocacy based on ideological commitment rather than purely client service.
Ultimately, the chapter argues that, despite ideological differences, conservative and libertarian lawyers share enough characteristics with liberal cause lawyers to be included within the broader analytic framework of cause lawyering.