【作者】路易斯 G· 楚贝克
【内容提要】
The ideology and institutions underlying lawyering for social justice are in a transitional period characterized by academic debate and innovative practices. Diminished funding for lawyers for subordinated people, and challenges to the lawyer-client hierarchy are contributing to the uncertainty; out of uncertainty, however, can come innovation. The academic debate centers on the ways in which law, lawyers, and legal institutions affect the situations of subordinated people. At the heart of the controversy are challenges to the canonical model for social change lawyering that has been dominant since the 1960s: the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) model. The LSC model provides lawyer-based representation of the poor in a neighborhood office staffed by salaried lawyers and paralegals, organized as a hierarchy among staff members and between staff and clients, and regulated and funded by a federal agency. The challenges come from two directions: internal critique and external analysis. The internal critique questions the efficacy of lawyering in LSC programs; the external analysis draws on scholarly writings that create a new theoretical lawyering model for subordinated people. The LSC internal critique targets lawyer proficiency and political efficacy.