Customer Reviews

Lawyers' Ethics and the Pursuit of Social Justice: A Critical Reader (Critical America)

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I am not a lawyer and I don't much like lawyers, but I picked this book up in my local book store and I was amazed. It actually discusses the ways in which some lawyers have understood their work as a way of furthering social justice. I loved the parts about how lawyers helped the NAACP achieve civil rights for African-Americans, and also the parts about how lawyers have developed theories that connect lawyering with civil rights, feminism, critical race theory and poverty rights. If more lawyers thought this way, we'd have a much more just society. The introduction says the book is intended in part for use in law school in lawyers' ethics classes, and I hope it is used for this. But it is fascinating reading for nonlawyers interested in law and social justice too.

This volume is a welcome addition to the teaching materials on legal ethics. It pulls together a diverse collection of important writing on the subject of lawyers and social justice. It includes both older "classics" and newer emerging voices and perspectives. And it includes writing from a range of academic perspectives--legal history, moral philosophy, critical theory, and clinical scholarship--that are rarely pulled together in one place. Although each selection is severely edited, they are packaged and juxtaposed in ways that distill the different perspectives represented by each author. As a result, the collection presents the deeper questions that legal ethicists are asking to the reader in a way that makes the questions both accessible and challenging. The introductory material and discussion questions that frame each section are thoughtful and provocative. As someone who teaches law students in both legal ethics classes and in hands-on clinical courses, I am very pleased to see this book and can't wait to use it, because I think it will provide a perfect vehicle for helping my students think about their professional roles and responsibilities as lawyers.

This is by far the best book on the subject primarily because of the careful attention paid to presenting a broad variety of perspectives on and strategies for achieving justice. Taken as whole this book is a great historical road map of the various ways lawyers have participated in bettering the material conditions of the lives of the underrepresented and marginalized. This is the perfect book for anyone who is interested in the law and social change.