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Portraits Of Resistance: Lawyer Responses To Unjust Proceedings, Alexandra Lahav

Faculty Articles and Papers

This Article considers a question rarely addressed: what is the role of the lawyer in a manifestly unjust procedural regime? Many excellent studies have considered the role of the judge in unjust regimes, but the lawyer’s role has been largely ignored. This Article draws on two case studies: that of lawyers representing civil rights leaders during protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and that of lawyers representing detainees facing military commission proceedings in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These portraits illuminate the role of the lawyer in a procedurally unjust tribunal operating within a larger liberal legal regime such as our own. …