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Revolution and the Making of the Contemporary Legal Profession

Revolution and the Making of the Contemporary Legal Profession England, France and the United States

Author: Michael Burrage
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199282982
Published In: March 2006
Format: Hardback , 696 pages
Jurisdiction: France, U.K., U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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A comparative study of revolution and civil society
Documents and explains the major differences in the history, rules, and institutions of three major legal professions

The revolutions of France, the United States, and England each inspired dreams of creating legal institutions that did not depend on specialist intermediaries, and, in different ways, provoked attacks on the existing rules and government of the legal profession more widespread and severe than at any other time in their history. These dreams came to naught and, sooner or later, the professions recovered, but their revolutionary experiences nevertheless had a lasting impact on their subsequent organization, and help to explain why three previously convergent professions should diverge as their societies industrialised.

The social upheaval of industrialization may also help to explain many of their peculiarities down to the present day: why, for instance, French advocates imposed such strict ethical obligations on themselves, from which they were only released by the state in 1992, why American lawyers should be the first to be at ease in the market, but faced intractable problems of professional self-government, why two professions should emerge in England, both with a high degree of self-government, and both long indifferent to law schools and to the market for legal services.

Since lawyers were the first occupation to organize as a profession, this insightful comparative inquiry then asks what their experience might tell us about other organized occupations in these three societies, and the difference between their educational institutions, their division of labour, their civil societies and lesser forms of government, and about the ways they have been stratified and formed classes.

Readership: Academics and scholars in the fields of sociology, social and political theory, social and legal history, and the legal profession; as well as sociologists, political scientists and others with an interest in the development of the legal profession.

1: Investigating a Fateful Encounter

Utopian Ideals and Revolutionary Practice

Two Contested and Honorific Concepts - Revolution and Profession

Why Do Professionals Behave the Way They Do?

What Have They Actually Done, or Tried To Do?

The Framework of the Investigation, the Evidence and its Presentation

2: Ideal and Myth in the Lives of French Advocates

The Formation of a State and of a Profession

Reconsidering the 'Triumph of the Professionals'

...And the 'Demise' of Advocates Before the Revolution

The Original Revolutionary Design: Act I

Terror and Thermidor: Act II

Napoleon's Selections, Innovations, and Synthesis: Act III

Return of the Advocates and Their Orders

Why was the Profession Destroyed?

Cycles of Constitutionalism, Repression, and Revolution

Bourbon Beginnings 1815 - 30

Orleanist Reprise 1830 - 48

Napoleanic Coda 1848 - 70

The Original Revolutionary Design Re-Enacted, Paris 1871

Marx's Nightmare and Tocqueville's Theatre

A Protracted and Reluctant Return to Normalcy

Schools, Stage, and Invisible Barriers

A Jurisdiction Defined by Incompatibilités and Plaidoiries

Alter Ego Tries to Change Advocates' Behaviour

Three Threats to Absolute Independence

An Anachronistic Sense of Humour

Myth and Irony in the Career of a Super-Profession

3: Practitioners vs. Legislators and Professors in the United States

A Journey from Utopia Back to England - Lawyers in the Colonies

The Revolution Controlled, for the Most Part

The Massachusetts Electorate Interprets the Revolution

Other States, Other Interpretations

Removing Restrictions on Legal Practice

The Collapse of Bar Associations and the Philadelphia Exception

Elected Judges and Codes Complete Americanization

Was it Capitalism, the Frontier or the Revolution?

Three Stages of Reconstruction

What had Changed During the Interregnum?

Practitioners vs. Professors and Legislators

Practitioners Search for an Effective Form of Government

An Undependable Ally: the Judiciary

Aother Undependable Ally: the Law Schools

Explaining Unethical and Innovative Behaviour

An Asymmetrical and Ever-Expanding Jurisdiction

How a 'Body' Became a Ladder

Failure or Success? Some Clues from Philadelphia

4: Learned Friends and Gentlemen in England - Beneficiaries of the Glorious Revolution

Confused Candidates in a Marketplace

Strange Bodies - the Inns Before the Revolution

The Trauma and the Tremor

Searching the Inns and the Courts

Explaining the Failure of the Revolutionary Movement

An Infrastructure of Absolutism is Created by Writs

...And Destroyed by 'the Greatest Thing Done by the English Nation'

The Medieval Corporation then Advances into the Modern World

Pupillages and Articles

Hedges, Honour and Markets

Little Republics, Little Commonwealths

Spinning Webs of Mutual Restraint

Status Rivals and Allies

Industrialization, Democracy, and the Unwritten Constitution

Is Professional Power an Adequate Explanation?

Thatcher and a Turbulent Tercentenary

The Discrediting of Self-Governing Communities

5: Comparing Professions and Societies

The Kinship of Old Regime Lawyers

Facing Common Revolutionary Aspirations

Diverging Paths into the Modern World

An Unmistakeable and Inconvenient Conclusion

An Ancien Régime Guide to French Modernity

A Slice of the American Dream

M'Learned Friends Illustrate Englishness

Michael Burrage, Research Fellow in Industrial Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science

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