Lawyers in Conflict and Transition

Project Commenced: 01/05/2014

Project Completion Date: 31/12/2019

Project PI/s

Kieran McEvoy

Other staff or partners

Louise Mallinder (CI) and Anna Bryson (former PDRF, now CI).

Project Description

The project explores the role of lawyers in transitions from violence or authoritarianism as moral and political actors rather than simply legal technicians. The fieldwork was conducted in Israel/Palestine, Cambodia, Chile, South Africa and Tunisia. The project seeks to;

a)To develop a comparative perspective on the sociology of lawyering which captures the role of lawyers as actors within and beyond the courtroom;

b) examine the intersection between lawyers and other key civil society, political and legal actors in social movements;

c) explore the contribution of lawyers in shaping local and international understandings of the ‘rule of law’;

d) interrogate the extent to which transitional contexts may be viewed as ‘exceptional’ from the experiences of settled democracies or whether such heavily politicised contexts merely shine a harsher light on generic socio-legal relations;

e) chart the relevance (or not) of key themes on the relationship between law, lawyers and political and social change in such contexts, in particular legal culture, colonial and post-colonial lawyering and legal pluralism.

The project builds upon previous work conducted by Kieran McEvoy in Northern Ireland on the role of lawyers on that conflict and transition.

Awarding Bodies

ESRC

Further Information

 https://lawyersconflictandtransition.org/

K. McEvoy and A. Schwartz (2015). Judges, Conflict, and the Past. Journal of Law and Society, 42,4, 528-55

A. Bryson and K McEvoy (2016) "Women Lawyers and the Struggle for Change in Conflict and Transition." Australian Feminist Law Journal 42.1 (2016): 51-73.

Bryson A, (2016). Victims, Violence and Voice: Transitional Justice, Oral History and Dealing with the Past. Hastings International and Comparative Law Journal, 39 (2), pp. 299-353.

K. McEvoy and A. Bryson (2016). "Justice, Truth and Oral History: Legislating the Past From Below in Northern Ireland." Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 67 (1), pp. 67-90

McEvoy, K, Mallinder, L. (2016). Politics, Theory and Praxis: The Respectabilisation of Transitional Justice. In K. McEvoy and L, Mallinder (eds), Transitional Justice Vol. 1-4. (pp. 1-25). London:Routledge

McEvoy, K., Dudai, R. and Lawther, C.. (2017). Criminology and Transitional Justice. In Liebling, A., Maruna S, McAra L (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford:Oxford University Press (pp. 391-415).

K. McEvoy and A. Bryson (2018) "Introduction to Transitional Justice in Social and Legal Studies Revisited." in Social and Legal Studies Special Issue Virtual edition, Transitional Justice.

K. McEvoy (2018) Travel Dilemmas and Nonrecurence: Observations on the Respectabilisation of Transitional Justice. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 12, 185-193.

K. McEvoy (2019) "Cause Lawyers, Political Violence and Professionalism in Conflict." Journal of Law and Society, 46, 4 (in press, 13,200 words).