This chapter highlights how lawyers navigate a complex legal and political landscape, using the law both to resist state power and to assert the rights of a vulnerable community within an authoritarian-leaning framework.
Middle East
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.
Ahmed and Stephan (2010), “Fighting for the Rule of Law: Civil Resistance and the Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan”
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.
Abbas (2021), “Lawyers’ Movement For The Renaissance Of The Independent Judiciary In Pakistan”
The article highlights how Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s challenge to military dominance in Pakistan sparked a nationwide lawyers’ movement that ultimately restored judicial independence and reshaped the country’s constitutional landscape.
Khan (2023), “The Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan: How Legal Actors Mobilise in a Hybrid Regime”
The article argues that in Pakistan’s hybrid regime, lawyer-leaders and political parties, rather than courts alone, played a crucial role in judicial restoration, challenging traditional legal mobilization theories based on political liberalism.
Munir (2009), “Struggling for the Rule of Law: The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement”
The 2007 Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan marked a pivotal push for rule of law and democratic reform, as lawyers mobilized against authoritarian overreach and succeeded in restoring judicial independence.
Shafqat (2019), “Civil Society and the Lawyers’ Movement of Pakistan”
This article analyzes how lawyers drove Pakistan’s 2007–2009 judicial movement, but civil society’s framing made its democratic impact possible.
Ghias (2010), “Miscarriage of Chief Justice: Judicial Power and the Legal Complex in Pakistan under Musharraf”
The article explores how Pakistan’s judiciary expanded its power under Musharraf, with lawyers and judges resisting regime control through public interest litigation.
Berkman (2010), “The Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement and the Popular Currency of Judicial Power”
This article explores how Pakistan’s lawyer-led movement challenged dictatorship and reshaped judicial power and political engagement.
Schaaf (2021), Litigating the Authoritarian State: Lawful Resistance and Judicial Politics in the Middle East
An examination of how citizens in Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine use law to resist authoritarianism, revealing that courts can serve as tools of accountability even under repressive regimes.