Law as Politics: A Response to Adam Babich (with Stephen Wizner)

Abstract

Way back in the 1960s, an era in which many people think we are still mired, we each made a career decision to be lawyers for poor people. While the road over the past thirty-five years has taken several twists and turns, we are still lawyers for poor people. When we started on this road, we believed that we were making a political decision - that lawyering on behalf of poor people meant representing the oppressed against entrenched interests, including the state. While we may no longer say things like "when the revolution comes" (well, sometimes we do), we still believe that choosing to represent the poor is a political choice with dramatic consequences in the nature of one's work.