de Sa e Silva, F. (2020). From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and lawyers in Brazil’s illiberal turn (2014–2018). Journal of Law and Society, 47(S1), S51–S73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12250 The article examines the role of law and lawyers in Brazil’s recent democratic decline. While legal professionals are often depicted as either victims of or counterforces …
The article Avoision: When Government Lawyers Turn the Sovereign Against Itself (Case Western Reserve Law Review, 2024) argues that when government lawyers engage in “avoision”—working at the edge of legality to help political superiors achieve their goals—they fundamentally betray their real client, which is the law itself. Richard W. Painter shows how practices such as …
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.
The article examines how Pakistan’s grassroots lawyers’ movement leveraged nonviolent resistance and mass mobilization to restore judicial independence, highlighting civil society’s potential to drive democratic change under authoritarian rule.
This article explores how the Hong Kong state counters cause lawyering by promoting “state-embedded lawyers” who defend regime stability, resulting in a polarized legal profession that mirrors broader societal divisions and reshapes public perceptions of the rule of law under mainland China’s influence.