The authority of lawyers

Authors

  • Heike Jung Universität des Saarlandes

Keywords:

Lawyers and the power, the power of lawyers, the role of professionalism in conflict resolution

Abstract

The public standing of lawyers has always been somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, they have been taken for a conceited technocratical elite with their own incomprehensible language. On the other hand, they have been cherished as the number one trouble-shooter and peace-maker. Today, the traditional monopoly of lawyers has come under pressure. Rivaling professions such as mediators want to have their share of the conflict resolution market. Still, lawyers are likely to retain the greater bulk.

The author identifies and discusses the following reasons for this predominance

  • the affinity of lawyers with the state and public authority;
  • the reflex of the authority of law;
  • the complex nature of legal systems and the ensuing need for professionalisation;
  • a particular training in rhetorical, linguistic, communicative and social skills;
  • the function of lawyers as ‘high priests’ of the judicial ritual;
  • the real or supposed competence of lawyers to master each and every challenge irrespective of its nature and background;
  • homogeneity of the group;
  • the ability of lawyers to embrace and ‘swallow’ other disciplines.

The topic is part of the general discourse on the role of professional actors.

DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1986030

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Views 201
Downloads:
PDF 101


Downloads

Published

05-01-2012

How to Cite

Jung, H. (2012) “The authority of lawyers”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 1(9), p. 8. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/163 (Accessed: 22 November 2024).

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 9 (2011): Autonomy and Heteronomy of the Judiciary in Europe

Section

“Judge-Only” Justice V. Collaborators

License

OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.

The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.

For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.

The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.