Law Commons^™

The Cause Lawyer’S Cause, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

The promise of human rights in South Africa may depend significantly on the course chosen by a professional and relatively independent South African judiciary. But what about the promise of human rights in other developing states which lack a judiciary with similar potential? Cause lawyers, increasingly visible in many of these new states, are presumed carriers of liberal legalism and democracy and celebrated for their courageous defence of human rights even in the absence of an independent court system. This comment argues that celebration of cause lawyers may reflect presumptions about their causes that are questionable even in the Global …