Soares Pereira and Ridi on the "Invisible College of International Lawyers"

Luiza Leão Soares Pereira, University of Cambridge, and Niccolò Ridi, University of Liverpool, have posted Mapping the "Invisible College of International Lawyers" through Obituaries, which is forthcoming in the Leiden Journal of International Law

Since Oscar Schachter’s famous articulation of the concept, scholars have attempted to know more about the composition and functioning of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’ which makes up our profession. They have done this though surveying public rosters of certain sections of the profession (arbitrators, International Court of Justice counsel), providing general anecdotal accounts about informal connections between members, or establishing certain individuals’ influence in the development of discrete legal concepts. Departing from these approaches, we use the obituaries published in the British Yearbook of International Law (1920-2017) to draw a map of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’. Obituaries are a unique window into international law’s otherwise private inner life, unveiling professional connections between international lawyers and their shared career paths beyond a single academic or judicial institution. Employing network analysis, a method commonly used in social sciences to describe complex social phenomena such as this, we are able to demonstrate the ubiquity of informal networks whereby ideas move, and provide evidence of the community’s homogeneity. Exploring the connections between international lawyers and their shared characteristics in this novel way, we shed light on the features of the community and the impact individual personalities have on the law. These characteristics of the profession and its members may be obvious to insiders, but are seldom acknowledged. Graphic representation is a powerful tool in bolstering critiques for diversity and contestation of mainstream law-making narratives. More than an exercise in exhaustive mapping, we seek to take the ‘dead white men’ trope to an extreme, provoking the reader to question the self-image of the profession as an impersonal expert science.

--Dan Ernst.  H/t: JFW

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Wald on In-House Counsel

Eli Wald, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, has published Getting In and Out of the House: The Worlds of In-House Counsel, Big Law, and Emerging Career Trajectories of In-House Lawyers in the Fordham Law Review:

The traditional story of in-house counsel is of a transformation and triumph over “Big Law” in a zero-sum game for power, prestige, and money. That story, however, is inaccurate descriptively, prescriptively, and normatively. Descriptively, in-house lawyers were part of the legal elite dominating corporate counseling before large law firms first rose to power and prominence. In-house counsel then lost ground and the position of general counsel to Big Law lawyers between the 1940s and 1970s, only to mount an impressive comeback to elite status beginning in the 1970s. Yet the in-house comeback was not a simple power struggle with Big Law. Rather, modern in-house lawyers including the “new” general counsel came from within the ranks of Big Law, an offshoot rather than a competitor of large law firms, sharing Big Law’s background, training, and, more importantly, professional values, ideology, and ethos. Thus, the story of in-house lawyers and their relationship with Big Law is one of a complex symbiotic affiliation, not a competitive zero-sum game.

--Dan Ernst

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Bradley and Rowland on women's access to law in England

 Kate Bradley (University of Kent) and Sophie Rowland (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) have published "A poor woman's lawyer? Feminism, the labour movement, and working-class women's access to the law in England, 1890-1935," Women's History Review (17 Aug. 2020). Here's the abstract: 

Women were excluded from both branches of the legal profession before the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act 1919. Whilst campaigning for women's entry to the law was also part of wider efforts to make the law more accessible. Before and after the 1919 Act, middle-class women were able to offer legal support to working-class women, through feminist and trade unionist networks and the professions that were open to them—factory inspection and social work. By examining key women’s organisations between the 1890s and 1930s, we trace the development of work to both educate women and girls on their legal rights and to directly tackle problems and breaches of the law. We argue that, by looking at the legal activism of women in the factory inspectorate, social work, trade union and women's organisations, fresh insight into the development and ‘mainstreaming’ of working-class claims on citizenship in the early twentieth century can be found.

Further information is available here.

--Mitra Sharafi 

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Sackar on Lord Devlin

Out this month by Justice John Sackar (Supreme Court of New South Wales) is Lord Devlin with Hart Publishing. From the press:

Lord Devlin was a leading lawyer of his generation. Moreover, he was one of the most recognised figures in the judiciary, thanks to his role in the John Bodkin Adams trial and the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry. It is hard then to believe that he retired as a Law Lord at a mere 58 years of age. This important book looks at the life, influences and impact of this most important judicial figure. Starting with his earliest days as a school boy before moving on to his later years, the author draws a compelling picture of a complex, brilliant man who would shape not just the law but society more generally in post-war Britain.

Further information is available here.

--Mitra Sharafi

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