Ashar (2016), “Deep Critique and Democratic Lawyering in Clinical Practice”
This article critiques mainstream legal education reform discourse for neglecting social justice values and embracing neoliberal frameworks.
This article critiques mainstream legal education reform discourse for neglecting social justice values and embracing neoliberal frameworks.
This study investigates the professional challenges faced by lawyers in authoritarian regimes.
This article examines whether lawyers should participate in legal proceedings that offer only the illusion of justice, potentially legitimizing a flawed system, or instead refuse involvement to preserve professional integrity.
The article invites contemporary lawyers to learn from this integration of daily legal work and political struggle as a model for resistance within unjust systems.
Björn Ahl, “Retaining Judicial Professionalism: The New Guiding Cases Mechanism of the Supreme People’s Court.” The China Quarterly, vol. 217 (2014): 121–39. Summary: In 2011 and 2012, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) published its first “guiding cases.” Guiding cases serve as decision-making models that must be taken into account by lower courts when deciding similar …
The article also offers a framework for action, including filing disciplinary complaints and embracing a more publicly engaged model of legal ethics scholarship.
Bjorn Ahl, “Judicialization in authoritarian regimes: The expansion of powers of the Chinese Supreme People’s Court.” International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 17, Issue 1 (January 2019): Pages 252–277 Summary: Over the past two decades courts in China have undergone tremendous changes as they developed into more professional and efficient institutions for solving legal disputes. …
This article critiques the ethical assumptions underlying liberal legal professionals’ engagement with authoritarian regimes, particularly through the lens of modernization theory, which once promised that economic development would naturally lead to democratization.
This article critically examines the role of public defenders in counseling clients within a carceral system, highlighting how the act of legal counseling can simultaneously reinforce systemic oppression and serve as a site for resistance and transformation.
This article examines how public interest lawyers engage with and support resistance movements that challenge the economic, political, and social consequences of globalization and neoliberalism.