At the Crossroads of Theory and Practice

Abstract

This special issue fittingly concludes with mediations from a diverse group of advocates and practitioners on what relationship exists—or should exist—between feminist legal theory, on the one hand, and the practice of legal advocacy, on the other. Focusing on how feminist prerogatives guide how movements make use of, or eschew, the law, the writers whose advocacy is showcased in this section explore how and to what degree feminist legal theory has taken up the actual practice of law and advocacy as a site for intervention or the advancement of gender justice. Conversely, these four practitioners—two attorneys, one sex work policy advocate, one self-identified “non-attorney legal advocate,” and none of them law professors— also reflect on their own experiences of feminist lawyering and advocacy, considering to what degree their own praxis reflects, engages, or refuses the myriad insights and political priorities emphasized in feminist legal theory, as a body of thought. Across the three pieces, there are multiple points of convergence and divergence, but where these writers and advocates agree is around the fact that process, in movement lawyering work, is every bit as important as product. In other words, as authors BeKura Shabazz and Lisa Sangoi write, the question of “how social change is achieved is just as important as the social change that is achieved.”