Cambridge University Press The Cultural Lives of Cause Lawyers

This book seeks to illuminate what we call the cultural lives of cause lawyers by examining their representation in various popular media (including film, fiction, mass-marketed non-fiction, television, and journalism), the work they do as creators of cultural products, and the way those representations and products are received and consumed by various audiences. By attending to media representations and the culture work done by cause lawyers, we can see what material is available for citizens and others to use in fashioning understandings of those lawyers. This book also provides a vehicle for determining whether, how, and to what extent cause lawyering is embedded in the discourses and symbolic practice around which ordinary citizens organize their understanding of social, political, and legal life. This book brings together research on the legal profession with work that takes up the analysis of popular culture. Contributors to this work include scholars of popular culture who turn their attention to cause lawyers and experts on cause lawyering who in turn focus their attention on popular culture. This is a joining of perspectives that is both long overdue and fruitful for both kinds of scholarship. Review '… a series that almost single-handedly, quickly and efficiently helped define, as well as develop, this exciting new field.' International Journal of Law in Context Book Description This book examines the cultural lives of cause lawyers by focusing on their representation in various popular media. About the Author Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence Political Science at Amherst College and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin and JD from Yale Law School. He is former President of the Law and Society Association; former President of the Association for the Study of the Law, Culture and the Humanities; and President of the Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs. He is author or editor of more than fifty books, including Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution; When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition; Something to Believe in: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyers (with Stuart Scheingold); and The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society, amongst many others. Sarat is editor of the journal Law, Culture and the Humanities and of Studies in Law, Politics and Society. His public writing has appeared in such places as the Los Angeles Times and the American Prospect, and he has been a guest on National Public Radio, The News Hour, Odyssey, The Abrams Report on MSNBC, World News Tonight on ABC, and The O'Reilly Factor. His teaching has been featured in the New York Times and on The Today Show. In 1997, Sarat received the Harry Kalven Award given by the Law Society Association for distinguished research on law and society. In 2004, he received the 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Award, given biennially to honor the best scholarship on the subject of equal access to justice. It was given in recognition of his work on cause lawyering and the three books he has produced on the subject. In 2006, the Association for the Study of Law Culture and the Humanities awarded him the James Boyd White Prize for distinguished scholarly achievement in recognition of his 'innovative and outstanding' work in the humanistic study of law.Stuart Scheingold, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, has written widely on rights, the politics of crime and punishment, cause lawyering, and, early in his career, on law and politics in the European Union. Given this range of interests, the CLASS program, with its comparative focus and interdisciplinary resources, provides a unique setting for intellectual engagement. He is co-director (with Austin Sarat) of the International Cause Lawyering Project, whose most recent volume, Cause Lawyering and the State in the Glo