Law in Contemporary Society

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TaylorMcGowanFirstPaper 3 - 13 Apr 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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  While this is a grossly generalized account of how lawyers can reshape society, the advocacy skills developed in the legal profession undoubtedly enable lawyers to create lasting social change so long as they are willing to wield them more like Gandhi (a lawyer himself) than Oliver Wendell Holmes. Practicing law in an environment dominated by myths inimical to justice will only produce change that is, at most, temporary. The prospect of turning a lawyer into a social revolutionary may be an unsettling proposition to some, but turning the pursuit of justice into a rat race should be unsettling to everyone.
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The use of the word "revolution" here is inconsistent, sometimes meaning more or less its conventional denotation, and sometimes denoting a change in the prevailing cultural patterns rather than social structure and order of power. For someone who believed in semiotic determinism, I suppose, the uses might be consistent, but for everyone else they are a powerful source of unclarity.

I think the basic point being made, if made simply, works well: some objectives lawyers might have would require the construction of social movements to achieve. In that case, a social movement might be both an instrument and a client. I recognize this configuration of practice. But I don't think Thurman Arnold is more than a secondary theorist for such a lawyer: the issue isn't the creeds of existing institutions, but the cultural paraphernalia that holds the social movement together. Its own creeds, in Arnold's terms, are the first matters in view.

In my own experience, it is the elaboration of the institutions permitting the organization of the movement that requires the primary ingenuity. This you do not spend the requisite attention on, being led astray by your own "revolutionary" rhetoric. Building a revolution means creating organizations, of however innovative a kind, and it is the work of creation, not the work of destruction, which induces success.

 
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Revision 3r3 - 13 Apr 2010 - 12:48:25 - EbenMoglen
Revision 2r2 - 07 Apr 2010 - 15:05:13 - TaylorMcGowan
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