Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T10:36:49.285Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - “Of course he just stood there; he's the law”: Two Depictions of Cause Lawyers in Post-Authoritarian Chile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Stephen Meili
Affiliation:
Consumer Law Litigation Clinic, University of Wisconsin Law School
Austin Sarat
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Massachusetts
Stuart Scheingold
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

“Of course he just stood there, he's the law.”

– Paulina Lorca, Death and the Maiden

Introduction

Paulina Lorca's comment about Gerardo Escobar, her husband and a human rights lawyer in Roman Polanski's 1994 film Death and the Maiden, succinctly captures one way that cause lawyers have often been viewed within Chilean popular culture: they just stand there. This essay explores whether this cynical critique of cause lawyers has endured the decade of political upheaval, social transformation, and legal reform that followed Death and the Maiden, using the recently produced Chilean television drama Justicia Para Todos (“Justice for All”) as a vehicle for comparison. In so doing, it focuses on two dilemmas consistently encountered by the cause lawyers in these fictionalized accounts: law vs. social justice and professionalism vs. public service.

This essay begins with a brief review of the legal reforms (primarily in the criminal law field) that followed the end of the Pinochet regime in Chile. It then describes the history of legal culture in Chile. The bulk of the essay analyzes Death and the Maiden and Justicia Para Todos, comparing the ways in which they depict the cause lawyers who figure prominently in the plots of each. The essay concludes with a series of observations about cultural depictions of cause lawyers in post-authoritarian Chile that relate to the overall themes of this book. Throughout, the essay refers to enduring themes of the Cause Lawyering Project that these depictions bring to mind.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×