Okechukwu Oko. “The Lawyer’s Role in a Contemporary Democracy, Promoting the Rule of Law, Lawyers in Fragile Democracies and the Challenges of Democratic Consolidation: The Nigerian Experience.” Fordham Law Review, vol. 77, no. 4 (2009): 1295-1332.
Lawyers in fragile democracies have the added responsibility of helping to create the conditions that will secure and consolidate democracy. These realities demonstrate that it is imprudent and unhelpful to focus on abstract ideals about lawyers’ roles in a democracy since such an approach will elide the contextual problems that depress the idealism with which lawyers all over the world embrace their functions. An assessment of the role of lawyers in deepening democracy should be undertaken with a strong awareness of that reality. Focusing on a specific country will enable a detailed, accurate, and contextual assessment of the broad range of ways in which prevailing environmental factors constrain and affect the role of lawyers in consolidating democracy.