In backsliding democracies where autocrats manipulate legal systems to entrench power, attorneys play a crucial dual role as defenders of constitutionalism and civic educators, documenting abuses, challenging authoritarian legal reforms, and empowering the public to recognize and resist the legalistic tools of autocracy.
Global Comparison
Savelsberg (2000), “Contradictions, Law, and State Socialism”
An examination of the relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism, explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective.
Chua (2019), “Legal Mobilization and Authoritarianism”
An examination of legal power in the lens that authoritarianism is all over.
Goldstein (2022), “The Attorney’s Duty to Democracy: Legal Ethics, Attorney Discipline, and the 2020 Election”
An analysis of the roles that attorneys have played in facilitating democratic backsliding internationally to draw lessons for the American legal ethics regime.
Lehoucq and Taylor (2019), Conceptualizing Legal Mobilization: How Should We Understand the Deployment of Legal Strategies?
Sets forth a systematic conceptualization of legal mobilization and situates it within a typology of uses of the law.