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A cause lawyer, also known as a public interest lawyer or social lawyer, is a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicitor ...
dedicated to the usage of
law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...
for the promotion of
social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...
to address a cause. Cause lawyering is commonly described as a practice of "lawyering for the good" or using law to empower members of the weaker layers of society. It may or may not be performed
pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...
. Cause lawyering is frequently practiced by individual lawyers or lawyers employed by associations that aim to supply a public service to complement state-provided
legal aid Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to co ...
. Cause lawyering is performed by a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicitor ...
or a firm that is "most frequently directed at altering some aspect of the social, economic, and political status quo." The content of the issue is not particularly relevant, only the advocacy of an issue and the attempt to bring about
social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...
through legal or even quasi-legal avenues. Cause lawyering can include dedicated advocacy by public interest firms,
pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...
work by attorneys in private practice and other non-traditional forms of law practice that advocates a cause.Laura Beth Nielsen & Catherine R. Albiston, The Organization of Public Interest Practice: 1975-2004, 84 N.C. L. Rev. 1591, 1603 (2006). Lawyers who work for the government, whether federal, state, or local, can also be cause lawyers; although the majority of cause lawyering tends to be adversarial towards the state.


Definition

As coined by experts Stuart Scheingold and Austin Sarat in their work ''Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering'', cause lawyering consists of "using legal skills to pursue ends and ideals that transcend client service – be those ideals social, cultural, political, economic or indeed, legal". There is no single "correct" way to define what Cause Lawyering is or who is a cause lawyer. Cause lawyering is particularly hard to put limits around because it encompasses so much in the legal world and almost any issue can be considered an issue or cause that is being advocated for, and thereby qualifying as cause lawyering. Cause lawyering does not require a particular political side, but does require a "determination to take sides in political and moral struggle without making distinctions between worthy and unworthy causes". Cause lawyering is less about the client and more about the issue the client represents.  Cause lawyering is about the belief in a cause or issue and the will/desire to advance that cause.  Cause lawyers tend to choose clients on the basis of their own ideological grounds, no matter where they fall on the political, social, economic, and /or legal spectrum.''Id.''  What ultimately separates the cause lawyer from other types of lawyers is the advancement of the cause through the client to transform the status quo in service to a cause that is just as important, or more important, than the client. In a 2004 American Bar Foundation essay, Thomas M. Hilbink outlined the "typolog es of cause lawyering.  In this essay, cause lawyers are broken into three typologies: (1) Proceduralist Lawyering; (2) Elite-Vanguard Lawyering; and (3) Grassroots Lawyering.  Proceduralist lawyering is "marked by a belief in the separation of law and politics, and a belief that the legal system is essentially fair and just".  Elite-Vanguard lawyering focuses on law as a superior form of politics that uses the law to render substantive justice in a way that will change substantive law and thereby change society. Grassroots lawyering, however, approaches law as "just" another form of politics, a venue that is corrupt, unjust, or unfair, and aims to achieve substantive social justice through using the law in combination of other social movements, but refraining from using the law as a primary method for social change.


History

What is now known as cause lawyering grew when the idea of "legal science", a 19th-century belief of legal objectivity in which law could be determined through the application of scientific principles and methodologies, was challenged. Until the late 19th century, the legal field worked to separate law and politics, precluding the idea that the law could be used as a force for political or social change.  The first organizations to break into cause lawyering and tear down the idea came into existence in the 20th century, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...
(ACLU).  Through intermixing political progressivism and the law, these two organizations paved the way for politically themed legal entities to use the law in a way that would advance the cause they represented. In applying the broad encompassing cause lawyering definition from above, cause lawyering has existed as long as legal advocacy has existed.  As long as an advocate has advocated for a client and against a perceived social or legal wrong, although the term was not coined until 1998, cause lawyering has been active.  In the late 1800s it was
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and state's rights, in the early 1900s it was women's suffrage and civil rights.  In the 1960s and the non-profit law firm was born.  The creation of non-profit law firms ushered in an era of progressive public interest firms modeled after already established like the NAACP and the ACLU to advance progressive causes from the environmental protection to consumer advocacy.  These beginning organizations of cause lawyering, and the ones that followed scored major legal victories that have lasting effects to this day; see ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' In the 1960s, the
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
began funding legal services programs as a component of anti-poverty programs helping fund some of the forerunners of legal services for indigent clients: Mobilization for Youth in New York, Action for Boston Community Development, the Legal Assistance Association in New Haven, and the United Planning Organization in Washington.  While not identified as cause lawyers at the time, these early programs explicitly fit the mold of using the legal system to advance their cause. Once the newly minted non-profit law firms were established as charitable organizations eligible for IRS tax-deduction, they began to advocate on behalf of disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, advancing the civil rights and poverty legal work from decades earlier. During the 1970s, feminist law firms began to emerge with the growing Women's Movement and with each newly emerging social movement, new cause lawyering organizations sprung up to complement them.  By the mid to late 1970s the explosion of progressive cause lawyering organization was being followed by the creation of more conservative cause lawyering firms.  The face of cause lawyering has ebbed and flowed just as political movements, social movements, and economic movements have from the 1970s through today.  Major events, like the establishment of the
Legal Services Corporation The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a publicly funded, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress. It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing funding for civil legal ...
and subsequent restriction; decisions in '' Loving v. Virginia'', '' Lawrence v. Texas'', ''
Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an ...
'', '' District of Columbia v. Heller'', ''
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'', 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It wa ...
'', ''
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius ''National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius'', 567 U.S. 519 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court upheld Congress's power to enact most provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Car ...
'', ''
Shelby County v. Holder ''Shelby County v. Holder'', 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and ...
'', ''
United States v. Windsor ''United States v. Windsor'', 570 U.S. 744 (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case concerning same-sex marriage. The Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied federal recognition ...
'', and '' Obergfell v. Hodges''; along with everyday victories and defeats of cause lawyers all over the United States have shaped our last one hundred years and will continue to shape the legal landscape to come.  As Dean F. Michael Higginbotham said in his Keynote Speech at the
University of La Verne The University of La Verne (ULV) is a private university in La Verne, California. Founded in 1891, the university is composed of the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business & Public Management, the LaFetra College of Education, College o ...
Law Review Symposium in 2014: "Make no mistake ... there is no better feeling in this life than to know that you have helped to improve the lives of those around you. Nice to make some money, nice to have material things, but there is nothing better than knowing that you have helped the impoverished, that you have helped the hungry, that you have helped the politically powerless, and that you have helped the undereducated to gain at least a semblance of dignity."


Public interest lawyering

Public interest law Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest, on 'not for profit' terms ( ''pro bono publico''), often in the fields ...
is "the legal practice that advances
social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals f ...
or other causes for the public good". In its most simple form,
public interest The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. Overview Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefore ...
is defined as "(1) the general welfare of the public that warrants recognition and protection" and "(2) mething in which the public has a stake ..."


History

The public interest notation was first given to a group of lawyers in the 1960s who fought to address the social injustice that existed in American society. Throughout the late 20th century, many lawyers self-defined themselves as public interest lawyers in order to gain legitimacy and respect as they sought to change complex social, political, environmental, and educational problems. As a result of many attorney's desire to participate in public interest law, organizations, such as the
ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...
and NAACP, were formed to develop a collaborative approach to addressing these societal problems. Today, public interest lawyering has expanded greatly to include free
legal aid Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to co ...
groups, liberal and conservative public interest organizations, partisan environmental groups, and individual lawyers who choose to represent the underrepresented.


Definition and debate

With the increase in self-proclaimed public interest lawyers, the definition and categorization of public interest lawyering continues to be a debated topic.  In attempt to narrow the categorization of public interest lawyering, many scholars and researchers have attempted to create a more precise definition of "public interest law". The
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
was one of the first groups to attempt to define public interest law as an " tivity that (1) is undertaken by an organization in the voluntary sector; (2) provides fuller representation of underrepresented interests (would produce external benefits if successful); and (3) involves the use of law instruments, primarily litigation." Looking at the role of
public interest law Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest, on 'not for profit' terms ( ''pro bono publico''), often in the fields ...
groups, Laura Beth Nielsen and Catherine Albiston defined public interest law groups as "organizations in the voluntary sector that employ at least one lawyer at least part time, and whose activities (1) seek to produce significant benefits for those who are external to the organization's participants, and (2) involve at least one adjudicatory strategy." Looking at public interest law as a more broad category, Scott Cummings suggests that public interest law is the legal means that advance the interest of disadvantaged people by way of challenging corporate or governmental policies and practices. Other scholars have defined public interest laws not by what a lawyer does but by a lawyer's financial self-sacrifice. When discussing young lawyers who are influencing change, Karen Dillon stated that public interest lawyers are those who "have followed their hearts, not necessarily their wallets, into careers that they are convinced will make a difference in the world".
Pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...
work of lawyers has become synonymous with the public good, and there is no debate that a majority of pro bono attorneys do contribute to the public good.


Public interest and politics

There are multiple ideological groups that unite on specific issues and work towards advances the causes that they believe are in the public interest. The early successes of the public interest movements prompted the emergence of public interest law firms, advocating on divisive political issues. In their discussion of cause lawyering, Scheingold and Sarat suggest that cause lawyering, "conveys a determination to take sides in political or moral struggle without making distinctions between worthy and unworthy cause".  Today, public interest law firms are at the forefront of public interest groups and political advocacy organizations. When partisan public interest organizations first gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s it was the liberal groups that bound together to promote significant social change. Drawing from the strategies developed by previous groups to advance specific causes, like the NAACP, ACLU and LDF, these public interest groups expanded their role to substantive law reform, litigation, and administrative and legislative advocacy. Because of this expansion in services offered, these groups began employing lawyers to create more lasting substantive change through legal reform. In response to the success of liberal groups advancing their partisan agendas, conservatives began to adopt this type of organization and developed public interest groups of their own. Many of the first conservative public interest groups (the National Right to Work Committee, National Right to Life Committee, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights), were created to advance very specific policy goals. These groups do not necessarily advance the public's interest but are intertwined with corporations and lobbying efforts to advance the interest that benefit their clients and result in financial gain for them. Since their inception, the role in public interest groups in politics has increased drastically, with many of them funding political action committee (PACs) with the purpose of advancing or inhibiting campaigns based on the candidate's stance on important issues. Public interest groups on both sides of the aisle have expanded their roles tremendously and can even be attributed to the divisive political arena that exist today. While their roles have expanded, their overall goals have not. Partisan public interest groups continue pursuing the causes that connect with their ideological beliefs and continue to have successes in advancing these interests.


Community economic development lawyering

Community economic development work includes building coalitions of interested parties to create social policies that improve affordable housing opportunities, increases access to affordable financing options, develops workforce skills, and generally produces more economic production within suffering urban and rural communities.Roger A. Clay and Susan R Jones, Building Healthy Communities, A guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers, and Policymakers, American Bar Association, 10, (2009) In order to serve their client, CED lawyers are required to be proficient in many areas of the law which include: business, finance, environmental studies, real estate, architecture, public policy, education, employment and human resources, community organizing, organizational development, and change theory among other subjects.


History

Community economic development efforts have been traced back to the early 1900s to the
Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was ...
. During that time Booker  T. Washington believed that the best way to advance African Americans interests was through encouraging economic self-sufficiency through encouraging job training and entrepreneurship. He believed that through economic self-sufficiency, hard work, and property ownership, African American communities would, on their own, create greater levels of wealth accumulation within the African community. To achieve his vision, Washington created vocational training programs and presided over the National Business League with the goal of supporting African American business networks, products, and services. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement brought about changes to Community Economic Developments advocacy by focusing on grassroots programs in order to achieve greater levels of equality in poor urban and rural communities. Groups like the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...
and Poor People's Movement began lobbying the Federal Government to create an economic bill of rights which demanded, among other things, improving the economic conditions within underrepresented urban and rural communities. In response, the Federal government created focused programs that targeted disadvantaged communities by providing increased education, job training, and family services. Beginning with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, both state and federal governments began to reinvest in struggling urban and rural communities through the creation of Enterprise Zones. The purpose of the newly created Enterprise Zones was to stimulate job creation within urban communities through tax breaks to relocating companies, job training and ultimately economic growth. Despite their good intentions, empirical studies have concluded that unless the underlying conditions are ready for economic development, the net benefit of the economic zone program is minimal. According to these studies, the underlying conditions needed to improve an economic zones chances of success are: low unemployment, high levels of investment and suburbs.


Criticisms of CED

According to Audrey G. McFarlane, CED lawyering efforts have fallen short of their intended goals of building economic development within a community. McFarlane asserts that the economic transformation within Economic Zones has failed in three ways. First, the structure of the economic stimulus has been designed to benefit large corporations that generally do not require high paying jobs. Second, the very fact that the programs are assigned to a geographical location further strengths the stigma associated with investing in "ghettos". Finally, simply providing a job does not address the entire problem facing a community and should include housing programs, workforce development, and food security among other things.


Organizations

A significant portion of cause lawyering is done through special interest groups or legal advocacy organizations. Cause lawyering groups are a type of public interest law organization (PILO). These organizations are generally structured as 501(c)(3) nonprofits. These organizations are generally tied to specific
social movement A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and m ...
s. For example, there are legal advocacy organizations for a wide range of causes such as
environmentalism Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seek ...
, racial justice,
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male poi ...
,
Evangelical Christianity Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "born again", in which an individual exper ...
,
consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...
s, the poor, and
civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
. These organizations allow cause lawyers to pool time and resources to develop complex litigation strategies for their causes. They often employ staff, have formal members, rely on grant or foundation funding, and even operate on a national scale. These groups may use "
test cases In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise ...
" to change the law to reach the group's political goal. For example, the
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...
(ACLU) famously defended John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1925, Tennessee passed the
Butler Act The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of mankind's origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in ...
which outlawed the teaching of evolution. The ACLU offered to defend anyone arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. High school biology teacher. Scopes urged students to testify against him and he was eventually arrested under the Butler Act. Clarence Darrow defended Scopes on behalf of the ACLU. Although Scopes lost at trial, the proceedings were heavily publicized and changed public opinion on the role of faith in public schools. Legal advocacy groups also educate the public and political leaders about their causes, sometimes through litigation.


Notable legal advocacy groups

While the ACLU concerns itself with a broad array of civil rights issues, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and
Southern Poverty Law Center The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white s ...
(SPLC) share a narrower focus on racial justice issues. Spearheaded by lawyer and future Supreme Court justice
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African- ...
, the NAACP used planned litigation to reverse the "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" doctrine in ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
''. Other prominent legal advocacy groups include the
Animal Legal Defense Fund The Animal Legal Defense Fund is an animal law advocacy organization. Its stated mission is to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. It accomplishes this by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect an ...
,
Center for Constitutional Rights The Center for Constitutional RightsThe Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) is a Innocence Project,
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, or simply the Lawyers' Committee, is a civil rights organization founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy. At the time, Alabama Governor George Wallace had vowed to resist cou ...
, Legal Momentum, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Legal advocacy organizations span the political spectrum. Originally, these groups tended to support politically liberal causes. Today, there are many politically conservative legal advocacy organizations, such as the
Liberty Counsel Liberty Counsel is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt religious liberty organization that engages in litigation related to evangelical Christian values. Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by its chairman Mathew Staver and its president Anita L. Staver, who ...
. Many of such groups are called Christian conservative legal organizations (CCLOs). The Alliance Defending Freedom and American Center for Law and Justice are also prominent CCLOs. CCLOs tend to focus their litigation on
religious freedom Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freed ...
, opposing same-sex marriage, and the right to life movement.


Criticisms of legal advocacy groups

Some grassroots organizations criticize national legal advocacy groups for dominating social movements. Legal advocacy groups may set the political agendas of social movements because legal advocacy groups generally have significantly more resources than grassroots activist groups. Additionally, legal advocacy groups may use a "top-down" approach to identifying and solving social problems without considering the actual needs of groups at the grassroots level.


Trends


United States trends

In 2004, Joel F. Handler conducted research that focused on how public interest law firms have changed over time. Citing a 1978 Weisbrod study, Handler surveyed other cause lawyers to determine how cause lawyering has changed over time. According to the study, cause lawyer organizations have become multi-issue driven as opposed to the single issue focus held in the past. In addition to expanding the scope of a public interest practice, Handler cites that this shift has also included the expansion into other non-legal advocacy which includes: researching, writing and, conducting education and outreach programs.Id. Due to the diversification of public interest organizations, the focus of most public interest organizations has become more diluted. Handler found that since 1975, the historically liberal public interest topics have, for the most part, experienced a decline in the percent of effort expended. Offsetting this decrease, Handler notes that growth has primarily been experienced within conservative public interest issues and addressing housing issues.


International trends

Cause lawyering has recently taken on a more international emphasis with lawyers working to produce social change most notably within the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones an ...
. Primarily focused on expanding the recognition of human rights, Chinese public interest lawyers have attempted to change the government by litigating high-profile cases and organizing public gatherings demanding government reform. In response, the Chinese government has attempted to silence the cause lawyers by limiting their efficacy  through "law based" restrictions and "extra-legal" measures. According to the Leitner Center, the
Communist Party of China The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
has been instrumental in passing laws that limit Chinese lawyers ability to effectively practice law by restricting access to clients, charging registration fees and coercing lawyers to drop unpopular cases in exchange for more favorable licensing treatment. In addition to these "law based" restrictions, the Leitner Center has documented cases where lawyers have been detained and even disappeared after refusing to drop unpopular cases. Cause lawyers in South American countries have begun to advocate more effectively by forming cause-lawyering networks. Covering a wide range of issues, these networks primarily focus on issues surrounding human rights and the environment.Austin Sarat Stuart Scheingold, Latin American Cause Lawyering Networks in Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, 307 (Oxford Press, 2001) In
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
cause lawyers are playing an increasing role in migrants rights. They have formed cause lawyering organization especially to protect the
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
of
asylum seekers An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum (i.e., international protection) in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and m ...
and temporary
migrant workers A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have the intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work. Migrant workers who work outsi ...
in the Technical Intern Training Program.


Notable cause lawyers

Cause lawyers have played a pivotal role in changing societal problems by using the legal arena to influence significant change. Notable cause lawyers who have created this change include: *
Louis Brandeis Louis Dembitz Brandeis (; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. Starting in 1890, he helped develop the " right to privacy" concept ...
* Clarence Darrow *
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...
*
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African- ...
*
Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the U ...
*
Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...


See also

*
Private attorney general A private attorney general is an informal term originating in common law jurisdictions for a private attorney who brings a lawsuit claiming it to be in the public interest, i.e., benefiting the general public and not just the plaintiff, on behalf ...
*
Public interest The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. Overview Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefore ...
*
Public interest law Public interest law refers to legal practices undertaken to help poor, marginalized, or under-represented people, or to effect change in social policies in the public interest, on 'not for profit' terms ( ''pro bono publico''), often in the fields ...
*
Social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...
*
Social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals f ...
* The Hollow Hope


References


Sources

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Rev. 601 (2009). * Burton A. Weisbrod, Conceptual Perspective on the Public Interest: An Economic Analysis, in Public Interest Law: An Economic and Institutional Analysis 22 * Calmore, John O. "Call to Context: The Professional Challenges of Cause Lawyering at the Intersection of Race, Space, and Poverty, A." ''Fordham L. Rev.'' 67 (1998): 1927. * Carol Rice Andrews, Ethical Limits on Civil Litigation Advocacy: A Historical Perspective, 63 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 381 (2012). * Cause Lawyering in Transnational Perspective: National Conflict and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine, 31 Law & Soc'y Rev. 473 (1997). * David Luban, The Moral Complexity of Cause Lawyers Within the State, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 705 (2012). * Deborah J. Cantrell, Lawyers, Loyalty and Social Change, 89 Denv. U. L. Rev. 941 (2012). * Deborah J. Cantrell, Sensational Reports: The Ethical Duty of Cause Lawyers to Be Competent in Public Advocacy, 30 Hamline L. 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Hatcher, Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Liberalism. by Terence C. Halliday, Lucien Karpik, and Malcolm Feeley, Eds. Oxford, United Kingdom: Hart Publishing, 2007. Pp. x+508., 43 Law & Soc'y Rev. 231 (2009). * Lea B. Vaughn, A Few Inconvenient Truths About Michael Crichton's State of Fear: Lawyers, Causes and Science, 20 Seton Hall J. Sports & Ent. L. 49 (2010) * Margareth Etienne, The Ethics of Cause Lawyering: An Empirical Examination of Criminal Defense Lawyers As Cause Lawyers, 95 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1195 (2005). * Mark V. Tushnet, The NCAAP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education,1925-1950 at 105-137 (1987). * Meili, Stephen. "Latin American cause-lawyering networks." ''Cause lawyering in the state in a global era'' (2001). * Michael Ashley Stein et al., Cause Lawyering for People with Disabilities Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement. by Samuel R. Bagenstos. New Haven & London: Yale Univ. Press. 2009. Pp. Xii, 228.., 123 Harv. L. Rev. 1658 (2010). * Model Rules of Professional Conduct 6.1 * Patricia Goedde, From Dissidents to Institution-Builders: The Transformation of Public Interest Lawyers in South Korea, 4 E. Asia L. Rev. 63 (2009). * Patrick J. Bumatay, Causes, Commitments, and Counsels: A Study of Political and Professional Obligations Among Bush Administration Lawyers, 31 J. Legal Prof. 1 (2007). * Rosenberg, Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Second Edition (American Politics and Political Economy Series (University Of Chicago Press, 2008) * Russell G. Pearce, ''The Lawyer and Public Service,'' 9 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Poly & L. 1 (2001). * Sarat, Austin, and Stuart A. Scheingold. ''Cause lawyers and social movements''. Stanford University Press, 2006. * Sarat, Austin, and Stuart A. Scheingold. The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice (Stanford Law and Politics; 2005) * Sarat, Austin, and Stuart Scheingold. "The dynamics of cause lawyering: Constraints and opportunities." ''The worlds cause lawyers make: structure and agency in legal practice'' (2005). * Scheingold and Sarat, Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering (Chapters 1 & 2) (2004) * Scott Barclay, Daniel Chomsky, How Do Cause Lawyers Decide When and Where to Litigate on Behalf of Their Cause?, 48 Law & Soc'y Rev. 595 (2014). * Scott L. Cummings & Deborah L. Rhode, ''Public Interest Litigation: Insights From Theory and Practice,'' 36 Fordham Urban Law Journal (2009). * Scott L. Cummings
The Internationalization of Public Interest Law, 57 Duke L.J. 891, 1034-35 (2008)
* Shamir, Ronen, and Neta Ziv. "State-oriented and community-oriented lawyering for a cause." ''Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era''(2001): 287. * Steven K. Berenson, Government Lawyer As Cause Lawyer: A Study of Three High Profile Government Lawsuits, 86 Denv. U. L. Rev. 457 (2009). * Stuart A. Scheingold, Essay for the in-Print Symposium on the Myth of Moral Justice, 4 Cardozo Pub. L. Pol'y & Ethics J. 47 (2006). * The Identity Crisis in Public Interest Law, 46 Duke L.J. 327 * The Plaintiff As Person: Cause Lawyering, Human Subject Research, and the Secret Agent Problem,119 Harv. L. Rev. 1510 (2006). * Thomas M. Hilbink, You Know the Type...: Categories of Cause Lawyering, 29 Law & Soc. Inquiry 657 (2004) * Waikeung Tam, Political Transition and the Rise of Cause Lawyering: The Case of Hong Kong, 35 Law & Soc. Inquiry 663 (2010)


External links


Steve Berenson, Government Lawyer as Cause Lawyer: A Study of Three High Profile Government Lawsuits
{{Authority control Lawyers by type Legal ethics Legal professions Social justice