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Disrupting the Cause Lawyering Narrative -- great panel by 3 early career scholars that questions how we should define and understand "cause lawyering" -- #ASLH2019 (thread 1/13)
Alexandra Havrylyshyn begins with a clear, intriguing question - we know that slaves used attorneys to plead their case, but how did they hire and pay for them? 2/13
she traces the lives of 2 attorneys with very different backgrounds and goals, to unpack what motivated them, what social consequences they faced, and what kinds of cases they took on. 3/13
she finds that these antebellum Louisiana attorneys don& #39;t fit the idea of a "cause lawyer" - a change agent crusading for justice in an unjust world. They were, first and foremost, advocating on behalf of their clients. 4/13
Myisha Eatmon brings us into the 20th century to complicate another narrative of "cause lawyering," in the NAACP& #39;s approach to civil rights litigation. Argues for NAACP in NC as a "networking agent" who often connected those in need to attorneys who could help. 5/13
In this, Eatmon contests the idea that the NAACP "brushed off" anyone whose case wasn& #39;t a good "test case" for their broader civil rights agenda. Argues that "local lawyering under tort law was disruptive - even if it didn& #39;t pursue a civil rights agenda." 6/13
Last panelist - @labuzamovies - opens with HUAC hearings and the Hollywood blacklist (a very different, but not unrelated, way in to a discussion of rights, liberties) 7/13
I& #39;m still processing Labuza& #39;s story - the lawyers here (again, a pair) tried to use ANTITRUST LAW to fight the Hollywood blacklist in the 50s/60s. Former labor litigators w/ rep as "lefty" lawyers. These folks most closely fit the idea of "cause lawyers." 8/13
They argued that the blacklist amounted to collusion among distributors; unintended effect - their expertise (read: nerdiness) on antitrust made them the go-to firm on antitrust in the period. 9/13
But their "causes," again, are a little unclear, and more complicated than they first appear. On the one hand - fighting for rights; on the other - fighting for a free market in entertainment, right to work?? 10/13
// GREAT Q from audience (George Aumoithe) -- Struck by "how much the black body is a site of legal transformation" in these cases, and suggests a connection to contemporary personal injury lawyers 11/13
// This also struck me as I was listening. These cases weren& #39;t exactly "jackpot justice" for these lawyers, but there were financial incentives to take these cases that mirror the incentives that promoted the growth of the plaintiff& #39;s bar in the 1980s/90s. 12/13
// It seemed like in each instance these were moments of legal transformation and experimentation that came from a progressive or liberal place, but had the potential to turn sour, to turn in on itself to eventually work against those same ends. 13/13
