Austin Sarat’s research while affiliated with Amherst College and other places

... The influence of social movements and defence lawyers has been notably identified, which is essential to understanding the development of human rights jurisprudence (Sarat and Scheingold 1998, 2001. The ability of these groups to impact the human rights implementation of courts depends on the legal culture (symbols, values, etc.) in each country. ...

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How conservative groups fight liberal values and try to ‘moralize’ the European Court of Human Rights

... Reviewed Article 203 morality' (Sarat & Scheingold, 1998: 3) by challenging the central activity of the legal profession, namely the provision of legal services in exchange for payment. This is achieved through amending aspects of the social, political, or economic status quo. ...

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Unregulated Immigration Law Clinics and Kant’s Cosmopolitan Right: Challenging The Political Status Quo

... Societies are generally seen as needing laws and some means of enforcing them, but there is nothing simple about those functions. Sarat et al. (2011) characterize the law as simultaneously being a means of punishment and of regulation. Therein lies a chronic hazard: a law would seem to have little value in either sense unless it is backed up by coercion or its credible threat, and yet that coercion must also be regulated by law. ...

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Black and ( thin ) blue ( line ): Corruption and other political determinants of police killings in America

... In that sense, cause lawyers are said to not only become advocates "for their clients but for causes and, one might say, for their own beliefs" (2004, p. 9). The defining attributes of cause lawyers therefore are moral and/or political commitment (Sarat & Scheingold, 2005). Given this, cause lawyering has been associated with many movements from labor, the environment, consumers to feminism including those opposing poverty and other inequalities. ...

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Cause lawyering when it really matters: how Istanbul lawyers reacted to events in Gezi

... Their dual self-identification through a call for justice and the rule of law against autocratic regimes is reinforced by their class position as low-status workers. This runs counter to the worldwide literature on legal professionalism and cause-lawyering, which often views lawyers' professional practice as demobilizing and a source of separation from movements (Sarat & Scheingold, 2006). Alongside several other authors in this Handbook, Khalil shows that even a superficial commitment to the rule of law can be a democratizing force, but also that this is far from a foregone conclusion. ...

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Introduction to the Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change: On "legitimate political discourse" in the global twenty-first century

... A broad literature on law and film discusses the analogy between formal jurors and viewers of legal films (courtroom drama films and documentaries of real trial proceedings) (Clover, 1998;Panse, 2014;Sarat et al., 2005;Sarat at el., 2019). The viewers-as-jurors encounter the legal system indirectly, through a filmed trial, rather than through physical attendance in courtrooms. ...

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Social Media Jurors: Conceptualizing and Analyzing Online Public Engagement in reference to Legal Cases

... Over the years, there has been an evolution in the punishment policy of countries, especially regarding the death penalty. The death penalty especially in the United States has been the subject of criticism for decades now (1). Throughout its history, state governments have adopted various methods of execution, justifying them as the most civilized and 'human' method of putting their inmates to death. ...

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The case of Kenneth Smith "The war of a state against a citizen"

... When repeated efforts are needed to find a vein for IV injections, or, in some instances, when a venous cut-down is needed to expose a usable vein-a process that is in itself a minor surgery-the sheer violence of the lethal injection process comes into focus. Glimpses of the violence revealed in botched executions, when afforded to witnesses, appear to produce shock and even horror, normal human reactions to violence that are otherwise averted by the sterile lethal injection process (for an historical account of botched executions, see Sarat et al., 2012). Two contemporary examples drawn from a catalog of botched executions provided by Radelet (2010) (1) off the gurney, etc.) that one of the witnesses (male) fainted, crashing into and knocking over another witness. ...

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Can I Get a Witness? Thoughts on Witnessing Executions

... I never theless believe that, in spite of its inadequacy to reflect the exogamous force delegates embody (the shaman being inherently 'local'), the image of the delegate-shaman cap tures quite well the minimalistic utopia that the ICRC strives to achieve. Indeed, by contrast to the utopian societies imagined by Plato or Thomas More which share con ditions of 'perpetual peace, guaranteed abundance, and conditioned virtue' (Georges Kateb quoted in Sarat et al. 2014: 3), the ICRC does not contemplate the implementa tion of such a holistic form of 'the good' (Bear and Mathur 2015). Rather, its actions are informed by the belief that if Evil cannot be eliminated, it can at least be contained. ...

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Masters of disorder: rituals of communication and monitoring at the International Committee of the Red Cross

... 106 The unifying feature of cause lawyering and what differentiates it from traditional lawyering is the embrace by these legal practitioners of the goals of their clients and their dedication to promoting those ends. 107 To be sure, lawyers may have a pluralistic approach to their clients and their causes, pursuing conventional lawyering strategies as well as cause lawyering on behalf of the same clients or over the course of their careers. 108 Some general contrasts to conventional lawyers may be helpful to illustrate the distinctions between the two groups. ...

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In the Shadow of War: A Study of Habeas Attorneys Representing Guantánamo Detainees