This article analyzes how cause lawyering emerged and thrived in Hong Kong under authoritarian conditions.
Evidence of Lawyers’ Resistance
Hajjar (2001), “From The Fight For Legal Rights To The Promotion Of Human Rights: Israeli And Palestinian Cause Lawyers In The Trenches Of Globalization”
This chapter examines how Israeli and Palestinian cause lawyers have helped build a human rights movement focused on the Occupied Territories.
Lee (2017), “Lawyers And Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement: From Electoral Politics To Civil Disobedience”
This article examines the pivotal role of Hong Kong lawyers in the pro-democracy movement.
Woods and Barclay (2008), “Cause Lawyers As Legal Innovators With And Against The State: Symbiosis Or Opposition?”
This article challenges the traditional view of cause lawyers as inherently oppositional and leftist actors standing against a singular, monolithic state.
Tam (2012), Legal Mobilization under Authoritarianism: The Case of Post-Colonial Hong
This article explores the dynamics of legal mobilization under authoritarian regimes, using post-colonial Hong Kong as a case study.
Cummings (2006), “Mobilisation Lawyering: Community Economic Development In The Figueroa Corridor”
This article reevaluates the relationship between cause lawyering and community mobilization, highlighting both the continuities and shifts from traditional CED practices toward more adversarial and politically engaged lawyering.
Sarat and Scheingold (1998), Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities
This book is a cross-national study of lawyers who devote themselves to serving political causes.
Boukalas (2013), “Politics as Legal Action/Lawyers as Political Actors: Towards a Reconceptualisation of Cause Lawyering”
This article examines the ‘resolutions movement,’ a popular political mobilization led by lawyers that operates through legal discourse and targets legal objectives as a form of resistance to contemporary US counterterrorism policies.
Rogers (2005), “Power to Law: It’s Not as Bad as All That”
This book examines how legal practitioners can both enable and resist democratic erosion, depending on how they interpret, wield, or subvert the law.
Simpson (2008), “Warriors, Humanitarians, Lawyers: The Howard Government and the Use of Force”
In backsliding democracies or states engaged in controversial military actions, attorneys serve as key actors in holding governments accountable to international law, interpreting complex legal standards like the crime of aggression, and ensuring legal debates remain part of public discourse.