Law Commons^™

Lawyers, Politics, And The "Lawyers' Interest": An Historical Inquiry, James W. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The assumption that the occupational identification of "lawyer" is the salient feature in evaluating political motivation is interesting, if questionable, according to the Author. Does occupational identity overwhelm other identities? Are politically active lawyers really a homogeneous group? Are they less affected by competing identities associated with wealth, geography, familial and constituency concerns, political ideology, party considerations, or any of the myriad other sources of public and private motivation of behavior? Surely the hypothesis that politically active lawyers behave differently from nonlawyers is worth investigating. This Article offers some preliminary responses to these questions posed, which are grounded in empirical …