This book explores how globalization and democratization are enabling cause lawyers to use transnational networks to challenge the status quo and promote social change through legal advocacy.
Halliday argues that lawyers use their legal expertise to shape state responses to crises, stabilizing democratic institutions and adapting to political, legal, and fiscal challenges.
This book traces how lawyers in the Arab world evolved from anti-colonial leaders to marginalized figures under post-independence military regimes, highlighting the shifting intersection of law, politics, and power.
YUCOM used international review to challenge Serbia’s ombudsperson for lacking independence and competence.
Rights-based lawyering in post-authoritarian democracies like Nigeria often builds on the foundations of legal activism developed under past authoritarian regimes, highlighting the continuity of legal resistance across political transitions.
Lawyers play a crucial role in upholding judicial independence, as shown in Pakistan’s 2007 movement, where their collective action helped restore a removed chief justice and reinforced the judiciary’s power against executive overreach.
In fragile democracies, lawyers must help build and secure democratic institutions, a role best understood through context-specific analysis rather than abstract ideals.
Despite some lawyers in Taiwan working for social justice, the idea of actively opposing a repressive state is not yet central to the legal profession, though ongoing democratization and legal reforms may enable a more politically engaged role for lawyers in the future.
This article critiques the default assumption that government lawyers share the same ethical duties as private lawyers and proposes a new framework grounded in a democratic understanding of law and justice.
The article argues that lawyers have a professional responsibility to understand and support democracy, not because it is perfect, but because their role is essential to improving and sustaining it.