This article highlights the crucial role lawyers played in resisting authoritarian-leaning actions during a period of democratic backsliding in the United States, specifically under the Trump administration.
This article examines the marginalized yet politically potent fringe of the legal profession—lawyers who neither represent commercial interests nor serve as state functionaries, but who dedicate their practice to advancing the interests of the poor and disenfranchised.
This work explores the American legal profession’s historical tendency to resist reform, particularly in moments of crisis that threaten its identity or institutional norms.
This article examines the role of lawyers in resisting democratic backsliding and authoritarian policymaking in the United States, particularly during the Trump administration.
The article argues that the legal profession’s shift to “neutral partisanship” in 1969 undermines lawyers’ ability to uphold justice and democracy by suppressing moral and ethical engagement.
Björn Dressel and Cristina Regina Bonoan, “ Courts and Authoritarian Populism in Asia: Reflections from Indonesia and the Philippines.” Law & Policy, vol. 46, no. 3 (2024): 277–297. Summary: Authoritarian populism has been making a comeback in Asia, as illustrated in Southeast Asia’s most important presidential regimes: the Philippines and Indonesia. In the Philippines, President …
Alexei Trochev & Peter Solomon, “Authoritarian constitutionalism in Putin’s Russia: A pragmatic constitutional court in a dual state.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol 51, no 3 (2018): 201-214. Summary: This article analyzes the successful adaptation of the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) to an increasingly authoritarian regime under President Vladimir Putin. It argues that the key to …
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 also offers a framework for action, including filing disciplinary complaints and embracing a more publicly engaged model of legal ethics scholarship.
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.