The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice » (1)

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. Stuart Scheingold is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington. Together, Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold are the authors of Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering (Stanford University Press, 2004) and the editors of Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities (1998) and Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era (2001). They were granted the National Equal Justice Library’s 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Award in recognition of their work on cause lawyering.

The study of cause lawyering has grown dramatically and is now an important field of research in socio-legal studies and in research on the legal profession. The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice adds to that growing body of research by examining the connections between lawyers and causes, the settings in which cause lawyers practice, and the ways they marshal social capital and make strategic decisions.
The book describes the constraints to cause lawyering and the particulars that shape what cause lawyers do and what cause lawyering can be, while also focusing on the dynamic interactions of cause lawyers and the legal, professional, and political contexts in which they operate. It presents a constructivist view of cause lawyering, analyzing what cause lawyers do in their day-to-day work, how they do it, and what difference their work makes. Taken together, the essays collected in this volume show how cause lawyers construct their legal and professional contexts and also how those contexts constrain their professional lives.