Cause Lawyers, Political Violence, and Professionalism in Conflict
| Author | Kieran McEvoy |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12188 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 529±58
Cause Lawyers, Political Violence, and Professionalism in
Conflict
Kieran McEvoy*
This article examines how cause lawyers in conflicted and
authoritarian societies balance their professional responsibilities as
lawyers with their commitment to a political cause. It is drawn from
extensive interviews with both lawyers and political activists in a range
of societies. It focuses on the challenges for lawyers in managing
relations with violent politically-motivated clients and their move-
ments. Using the notion of `legitimation work', it seeks to examine the
complex, fluid, and contingent understandings of legal professionalism
that is developed in such contexts, offering three overlapping `ideal
types' of cause lawyers in order to better understand the meaning of
legal professionalism in such sites: (a) struggle lawyers (b) human
rights activists and (c) a `pragmatic moral community'. The article
concludes by re-examining how law is imagined in the legitimation
work of cause lawyers in such settings and how that work is
remembered in the transition from violence.
529
*School of Law, Queens University Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland
k.mcevoy@qub.ac.uk
Previous versions presented at various staff seminars and conferences including a
symposium in Cardiff in 2016 and as the topic of the Annual Socio-Legal Studies lecture,
Oxford, May 2017. I am grateful for comments and discussions at these events. I'm also
indebted for comments and suggestions from Gordon Anthony, Christine Bell, Anna
Bryson, Lauren Dempster, Ron Dudai, Shadd Maruna, Louise Mallinder, John Morison,
Aogan Mulcahy, Tim Newburn, Anne Marie McAlinden, Chris McCrudden, Justice Kate
O'Regan, Hannah Quirk, and Richard Sparks, and for excellent research assistance by
Kevin Hearty. Finally, many thanks to all those interviewed for their kindness in sharing
their stories. Funding was provided by the ESRC (ES/J009849/1).
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
INTRODUCTION
The fact is that for much of my life I have lived simultaneously as lawyer and
as outlaw. Anyone who has been in clandestinity will know how split the
psyche becomes when you work through the law in the public sphere, and
against the law in the underground.
1
This article has its origins in a long-standing interest in the dialectic relation-
ship between lawyers and clients engaged in politically motivated violence. I
have previously conducted research on the role of law and lawyers in the
Northern Ireland conflict and transition.
2
In this article, I will examine the
work of cause lawyers in other conflicted or authoritarian contexts. In
particular, through the prism of `legitimacy work',
3
the article explores how
cause lawyers attempted to balance po litical commitments with their
professional and ethical responsibilities as lawyers in such sites.
Cause lawyering scholarship has historically focused on settled demo-
cracies (discussed below). However, there is a nascent literature on cause
lawyers in conflicted, authoritarian, and transitional societies.
4
This scholar-
ship charts legal strategies developed by cause lawyers, difficult relations
with the state (and conventional lawyers), and intimidation and harassment
by the state or its proxies.
5
The focus of this article is different. Its primary
objective is to examine how cause lawyers in such contexts deal not with the
state, but with politically motivated violent clients and the movements to
which they belong.
As is detailed below, some cause lawyers have varying degrees of
sympathy with the objectives of such individuals and groups. In these con-
texts, wherein cause lawyers may discard the neutral `hired gun' professional
530
1 A. Sachs, The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law (2009) 1.
2 K. McEvoy, `Law, Struggle and Political Transformation in Northern Ireland'
(2000) 27 J. of Law and Society 542; K. McEvoy, `What Did the Lawyers Do
During the ``War''? Neutrality, Conflict and the Culture of Quietism' (2011) 74
Modern Law Rev. 350.
3 R. Barker, Legitimating Identities: The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects
(2001).
4 For example, G. Bisharat, Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule: Law and Disorder
in the West Bank (1989); A. Sarat and S. Scheingold (eds.), Cause Lawyering and
the State in a Global Era (2001); L. Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Court
System in the West Bank and Gaza (2005); T. Halliday et al. (eds.), Fighting for
Political Freedom (2007); W. Tam, Legal Mobilization under Authoritarianism: The
Case of Post-Colonial Hong Kong (2013); N. Cheesman, Opposing the Rule of Law:
How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order (2015); R. Stern, `Activist Lawyers in
Post-Tiananmen China' (2016) 42 Law & Social Inquiry 234.
5 M. Flaherty, `Human Rights Violation against Defense Lawyers: The Case of
Northern Ireland' (1994) 7 Harvard Human Rights J. 87; Human Rights First,
Human Rights Defenders and Justice and Accountability in the Americas (2005); A.
Batesmith and J. Stevens, `In the Absence of the Rule of Law: Everyday Lawyering,
Dignity and Resistance in Myanmar's ``Disciplined Democracy''' (2018) 28 Social
& Legal Studies 573.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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