Thomas Hilbink's Cause Lawyers And Social Movement

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Throughout this course so far, we have repeatedly discussed the varying positions of lawyers throughout social movements and cause lawyering. The argument made by Thomas Hilbink in Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold’s book, Cause Lawyers and Social Movements, places lawyers as a direct part of the civl rights movement based on what each individual brought to the law from their own personal experiences. He bases his argument on the interdisciplinary approach that lawyers apply to the law that is ever-changing depending on the experiences of the lawyers themselves. As a result, Hilbink believes that personal belief and experience shaped how civil rights lawyers acted in the reconstruction of cause lawyering. Additionally, the legal consciousness of the author’s argument points to the relationships and or lack thereof between the lawyers and the activists to examine what and how they go about using …show more content…
The group agreed that protesting and activism should be a form of liberation for civil rights fighters, one that allowed them to put their bodies on the line and challenge the white supremacist power directly. The leaders of this group additionally enforced the opportunity for activists to collaborate with the lawyers to share their ideas for legal action and be taken seriously. Therefore, “activists gave an enthusiastic reception to those who adopted an approach to lawyering that resembled the movement’s radical democratic philosophy” (Hilbink, 71). Grassroots lawyers realized that tangible civil rights successes were found by engaging with the activists to challenge southern society. Essentially, “the goal was not to win a legal victory but to transform southern society” (Hilbink, 72). As a result, grassroots had the best relationship with activists our of the three types of cause