This comprehensive picture of the contemporary American legal profession traces its development over the last hundred years. Abel examines a variety of topics including the nature and effect of entry barriers, the rise and fall of restrictive practices, efforts to create demand for lawyers' services, self-regulation, the income and status of lawyers, the growth of public and private employment, the displacement of solo and small firms, and the allocation of lawyers to roles.
Using detailed records of disciplinary proceedings and six disciplinary case studies, Abel describes the actions surrounding certain cases based on three of the most common complaints: neglecting the client, overcharging of clients, and betraying adversaries and courts out of excessive loyalty to clients or causes.
People need lawyers for many things, including tax and immigration advice, drafting contracts, preparing wills, buying and selling houses, forming and dissolving companies, and representation and advice during divorce, probate, personal injury and criminal charges. But many people do not trust lawyers. With good reason, they fear that lawyers will neglect or overcharge them, betray them out of self-interest or on behalf of others, or obstruct the pursuit of justice out of overzealousness. Although the legal profession drafts ethical rules, law schools teach those rules, the bar exam tests lawyers' knowledge, and disciplinary bodies enforce them, we know that violations by lawyers are all too common. Lawyers on Trial: Understanding Ethical Misconduct by California Attorneys, by Richard L. Abel, presents six dramatic accounts of California lawyers who betrayed their clients and the legal system. Through the detailed records of the disciplinary proceedings, it examines some of the most common complaints about lawyers: chasing ambulances, charging excessive fees, violating conflict of interest rules, and displaying excessive zeal. These complex and compelling dramas serve to make the ethical rules, and the temptations they seek to curb, come vividly alive for law students, lawyers, those thinking of becoming lawyers, anyone who has been or might some day be a client, and the general public. The lessons to be drawn from these situations can help the legal profession and the public devise better strategies for ensuring that lawyers abide by the rules.
Richard L. Abel presents the stories of ten California lawyers who broke the rules: hiring an ex-cop to chase ambulances, flouting fee limitations in medical malpractice cases, creating a fictitious company and impersonating non-existent people in order to appropriate Sega's computer games.
The US 'war on terror' has repeatedly violated fundamental rule of law values. When executive and legislature commit such egregious wrongs, courts represent the ultimate defense. Law's Trials: The Performance of Legal Institutions in the US 'War on Terror' offers the first comprehensive account of judicial performance during the sixteen years of the Bush and Obama administrations. Abel examines criminal prosecutions of alleged terrorists, courts martial of military personnel accused of law of war violations, military commission trials of 'high value detainees', habeas corpus petitions by Guantánamo detainees, civil damage actions by victims of both the 'war on terror' and terrorism, and civil liberties violations by government officials and Islamophobic campaigners. Law's Trials identifies successful defenses of the rule of law through qualitative and quantitative analyses, comparing the behavior of judges within and between each category of cases and locating those actions in a comparative history of efforts to redress fundamental injustices.
The US 'war on terror', which Bush declared and Obama continued, repeatedly violated fundamental rule of law values. Law's Wars: The Fate of the Rule of Law in the US 'War on Terror' is the first comprehensive account of efforts to resist and correct those violations. It focuses on responses to abuses in Abu Ghraib, efforts by Guantánamo Bay detainees to improve conditions of confinement in and win release, exposés of and efforts to end torture and electronic surveillance, and civilian casualties on the battlefield, including targeted killings. Abel deploys a law and society perspective to construct and analyze detailed narratives of the roles of victims, whistle-blowers, the media, NGOs, lawyers, doctors, politicians, military personnel, foreign governments and international organizations in defending the rule of law. Only by understanding past errors can we hope to prevent their repetition in what promises to be an endless 'war on terror'.
Politics by Other Means explores the fundamental question of how law can constrain political power by offering a pathbreaking account of the triumphant final decade of the struggle against apartheid. Richard Abel presents case studies of ten major legal campaigns including: challenges to pass laws; black trade union demands for recognition; state terror; censorship; resistance to the "independent" homelands; and treason trials.
During the 1990s, reforms in the English legal profession transformed traditions, over the vigorous objections of the judiciary, Bar, and Law Society. This book mines that tumultuous period for insights into the prospects of professionalism in the 21st century.
Chronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of both Trump’s efforts to erode democracy’s essential elements and opposition to those efforts. This book is about the threat of autocracy, which antedated Donald Trump and will persist after he leaves the stage. Autocrats blur or breach the separation of powers, use executive orders to bypass the legislature, pack the courts, replace career prosecutors with political appointees, abuse the pardon power, and claim immunity from the law. They seek to hobble opposition from civil society by curtailing speech and assembly, tolerating and even encouraging vigilante violence, and attacking the media. As this book demonstrates, Trump followed the autocrat’s playbook in many ways. He was a huckster of hate, aiming his vitriol at women and racial minorities and making attacks on immigrants the focus of his 2016 campaign, as well as his first years in office. Nevertheless, his rhetoric and policies encountered widespread opposition—from religious leaders, business executives, lawyers and bar associations, and civil servants. His executive orders (on which he relied) were almost all struck down by courts: including the first two “Muslim bans,” the detention of children and their separation from parents, the diversion of military funds to build the border wall, the insertion of a citizenship question in the census, and the limits on asylum. Just as Trump sought to weaponize the criminal justice system against his political opponents, so he manipulated it to defend his cronies, derailing some of their prosecutions. Trump also intervened in courts martial and criminal prosecutions of those convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and those accused of desertion and terrorism. Again, however, there was resistance, as some career prosecutors withdrew from cases or resigned when subjected to political pressure and federal courts convicted all of Trump’s allies—even though the president went on to use his unreviewable pardon power. This book, then, documents the abuses that are characteristic of autocracy and assesses the various forms of resistance to them. This definitive account and analysis of Trumpism in action, as well as the resistance to it, will appeal to scholars, students, and others with interests in politics, populism, and the rule of law and, more specifically, to those concerned with resisting the threat that autocracy poses to liberal democracy.
This detailed portrait of American lawyers traces their efforts to professionalize during the last 100 years by erecting barriers to control the quality and quantity of entrants. Abel describes the rise and fall of restrictive practices that dampened competition among lawyers and with outsiders. He shows how lawyers simultaneously sought to increase access to justice while stimulating demand for services, and their efforts to regulate themselves while forestalling external control. Data on income and status illuminate the success of these efforts. Charting the dramatic transformation of the profession over the last two decades, Abel documents the growing number and importance of lawyers employed outside private practice (in business and government, as judges and teachers) and the displacement of corporate clients they serve. Noting the complexity of matching ever more diverse entrants with more stratified roles, he depicts the mechanism that law schools and employers have created to allocate graduates to jobs and socialize them within their new environments. Abel concludes with critical reflections on possible and desirable futures for the legal profession.
Chronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of the rise of Trump’s populist support in 2016, and his failed efforts to nullify the result of the 2020 election. This book is about the threat of autocracy, which antedated Donald Trump and will persist after he leaves the stage. Autocracy negates both liberalism—which includes the protection of fundamental rights, the rule of law, separation of powers, and respect for specialist expertise—and democracy—which requires that the state be responsible to an electorate composed of all eligible voters—by concentrating unconstrained power in a single individual. Anticipating defeat in the 2016 election, Trump attacked suggestions that he had sought, or even benefited from, Russian assistance despite the evidence, and he made repeated claims of election fraud. In 2020, fearful that his mishandling of the pandemic had alienated voters, he intensified the allegations of fraud, demanding recounts, pressuring state legislatures and state election officials, advancing bizarre conspiracy theories, and finally, calling for a massive demonstration, urging protesters to march to the Capitol to pressure Congress, promising to accompany them. But as this book documents, Trump’s efforts to nullify the result of the 2020 election failed. As the courts rejected his numerous challenges, state election officials loyally performed their statutory duties, the Justice Department found no evidence of fraud, and politicians from all sides certified Biden’s victory, this book traces the many, and varied, forms of the defense of liberal democracy located within both the state and civil society, including law (judges, government lawyers, and private practitioners), the media, NGOs, science (and other forms of expertise), and civil servants (in federal, state, and local government). Evaluating their efficacy, the book maintains, is vital if—as history has repeatedly taught us—the price of liberal democracy, like that of liberty itself, is eternal vigilance. This definitive account and analysis of Trumpism and the resistance to it will appeal to scholars, students, and others with interests in politics, populism, and the rule of law and, more specifically, to those concerned with resisting the threat that autocracy poses to liberal democracy.
Globally, the methodologies of legal education have not changed in any fundamental way, some methods dating back hundreds of years. Law schools have relied, for too long, on passive learning methods such as lectures or cases. Clinical legal education provides an alternative that is more than just another pedagogical method. It provides a way for students to experience their emerging professional selves, while providing services or projects with poor and underrepresented clients. This book documents both the historical origins of clinical experiments in the earliest days of US university legal education, and the now-global reach of clinical pedagogy as a proven tool for effective training of legal professionals.
The US 'war on terror' has repeatedly violated fundamental rule of law values. When executive and legislature commit such egregious wrongs, courts represent the ultimate defense. Law's Trials: The Performance of Legal Institutions in the US 'War on Terror' offers the first comprehensive account of judicial performance during the sixteen years of the Bush and Obama administrations. Abel examines criminal prosecutions of alleged terrorists, courts martial of military personnel accused of law of war violations, military commission trials of 'high value detainees', habeas corpus petitions by Guantánamo detainees, civil damage actions by victims of both the 'war on terror' and terrorism, and civil liberties violations by government officials and Islamophobic campaigners. Law's Trials identifies successful defenses of the rule of law through qualitative and quantitative analyses, comparing the behavior of judges within and between each category of cases and locating those actions in a comparative history of efforts to redress fundamental injustices.
Chronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of Trump’s assault on truth and his populist attacks on expertise, as well as scientific and legal opposition to them. This book is about the threat of autocracy, which antedated Donald Trump and will persist after he leaves the stage. Pandering to populists, autocrats attack professional expertise in an Orwellian world, where “ignorance is strength” and where, as Hannah Arendt wrote, people “believe everything and nothing.” Trump sought to inflame xenophobia by blaming China for the pandemic and closing U.S. borders, then declaring victory and, when that proved premature, wrongly blaming the number of tests for escalating cases. He sought to muzzle government scientists and denounced those who defied or evaded his directives as members of the “deep state,” preferring to rely on inexpert buddies. He elevated obscure scientists who promoted quack cures and opposed effective preventive measures while sidelining the few reputable experts, who nevertheless courageously resisted political interference. In addition to these, as this book documents, independent scientists, scientific journals and professional associations also outspoken, often more so. Even the pharmaceutical industry sought to preserve the integrity of a federal bureaucracy that assured the public the drugs they consumed were safe and efficacious. Following Trump’s numerous efforts to distort and undermine expertise, this book describes and evaluates the resilience of scientific and legal defenses of truth. This definitive account and analysis of the Trump’s populist rejection of truth and expertise will appeal to scholars, students and others with interests in politics, populism and the rule of law and, more specifically, to those concerned with resisting the threat that autocracy poses to liberal democracy.
In popular tradition witches were either practitioners of magic or people who were objectionable in some way, but for early European courts witches were heretics and worshippers of the Devil. This study concentrates on the period between 1300 and 1500 when ideas about witchcraft were being formed and witch-hunting was gathering momentum. It is concerned with distinguishing between the popular and learned ideas of witchcraft. The author has developed his own methodology for distinguishing popular from learned concepts, which provides adequate substantiation for the acceptance of some documents and the rejection of others. This distinction is followed by an analysis of the contents of folk tradition regarding witchcraft, the most basic feature of which is its emphasis on sorcery, including bodily harm, love magic, and weather magic, rather than diabolism. The author then shows how and why learned traditions became superimposed on popular notions – how people taken to court for sorcery were eventually convicted on the further charge of devil worship. The book ends with a description of the social context of witch accusations and witch trials.
People need lawyers for many things, including tax and immigration advice, drafting contracts, preparing wills, buying and selling houses, forming and dissolving companies, and representation and advice during divorce, probate, personal injury and criminal charges. But many people do not trust lawyers. With good reason, they fear that lawyers will neglect or overcharge them, betray them out of self-interest or on behalf of others, or obstruct the pursuit of justice out of overzealousness. Although the legal profession drafts ethical rules, law schools teach those rules, the bar exam tests lawyers' knowledge, and disciplinary bodies enforce them, we know that violations by lawyers are all too common. Lawyers on Trial: Understanding Ethical Misconduct by California Attorneys, by Richard L. Abel, presents six dramatic accounts of California lawyers who betrayed their clients and the legal system. Through the detailed records of the disciplinary proceedings, it examines some of the most common complaints about lawyers: chasing ambulances, charging excessive fees, violating conflict of interest rules, and displaying excessive zeal. These complex and compelling dramas serve to make the ethical rules, and the temptations they seek to curb, come vividly alive for law students, lawyers, those thinking of becoming lawyers, anyone who has been or might some day be a client, and the general public. The lessons to be drawn from these situations can help the legal profession and the public devise better strategies for ensuring that lawyers abide by the rules.
How do lawyers think about and make the important decisions that constitute the day-to-day practice of law? This book explores that question through an extensive empirical study of lawyers practicing divorce law in New England. The authors emphasize the importance of "collegial control" in shaping lawyers' decisions and identify a variety of "communities of practice" that serve as key agents of that control. Offering a new understanding of the nature of lawyers' work in divorce law as well as a new perspective on legal professionalism, this book is required reading for scholars, students, and practitioners.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.