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Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945

Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945

Name: Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945
Brand: Cambridge University Press
SKU: 9781107446410
Price: 365.69 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Felice Batlan
ISBN: 9781107446410

By Felice Batlan

Cambridge University Press April 2015

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9781107446410
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication: April 2015
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Also available as

Hardback

Details

This book re-examines fundamental assumptions about the American legal profession and the boundaries between 'professional' lawyers, 'lay' lawyers, and social workers. Putting legal history and women's history in dialogue, it demonstrates that nineteenth-century women's organizations first offered legal aid to the poor and that middle-class women functioning as lay lawyers, provided such assistance.

Felice Batlan illustrates that by the early twentieth century, male lawyers founded their own legal aid societies. These new legal aid lawyers created an imagined history of legal aid and a blueprint for its future in which women played no role and their accomplishments were intentionally omitted.

In response, women social workers offered harsh criticisms of legal aid leaders and developed a more robust social work model of legal aid. These different models produced conflicting understandings of expertise, professionalism, the rule of law, and ultimately, the meaning of justice for the poor.

Introduction

Part I. A Female Dominion of Legal Aid, 1863-1910:

1. The origins of legal aid

2. The Chicago experience: the maturation of women's legal aid

Part II. The Professionalization of Legal Aid, 1890-1921:

3. Of immigrants, sailors, and servants: the Legal Aid Society of New York

4. Reinventing legal aid

Part III. Dialogues: Lawyers and Social Workers, 1921-45:

5. Constellations of justice

6. Compromises

Conclusion.

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