Lawyers and Movements

An innovative approach for understanding how law matters in contemporary social movements that rise to meet the twin challenges of American democracy: promoting liberal values of equality and inclusion, while fortifying the rule of law itself.
Fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, America confronts a new democratic reckoning. What role do-and should-lawyers play in strengthening collective action at this pivotal moment? In Lawyers and Movements, Scott L. Cummings offers an innovative answer to this age-old question, breaking from the legacy of legal liberalism to reveal the essential, yet underappreciated, work of lawyers in social struggle-redefining legal mobilization in transformative times. Building from a sweeping analysis of progressive legal theory and practice, Cummings challenges foundational critiques of lawyers as inaccurate and ill-suited to the current context. In response, he advances a new theory of legal mobilization in which control over law is at the heart of movements rising to meet the twin challenges of contemporary liberalism: promoting inclusion and equity, while fortifying democratic institutions. A call to radically rethink how lawyers contribute to progressive change, Lawyers and Movements asserts a timely challenge to democracy in crisis.

Scott L. Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He is faculty director of the Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, and a longtime member of the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.