Unleashing the Force of Law : Legal Mobilization, National Security, and Basic Freedoms

Basic freedoms cannot be abandoned in times of conflict, or can they? Are basic freedoms routinely forsaken during times when there are national security concerns? These questions present different conundrums for the legal profession, which generally values basic freedoms but is also part of the architecture of emergency legal frameworks. __Unleashing the Force of Law__ uses multi-jurisdiction empirical data and draws on cause lawyering, political lawyering and Bourdieusian juridical field literature to analyze the invocation of legal norms aimed at the protection of basic freedoms in times of national security tensions. It asks three main questions about the protection of basic freedoms. First, when do lawyers mobilize for the protection of basic freedoms? Second, in what kind of mobilization do they engage? Third, how do the strategies they adopt relate to the outcomes they achieve? Covering the last five decades, the book focusses on the 1980s and the Noughties through an analysis of legal work for two groups of independence seekers in the 1980s, namely, Republican (mostly Catholic) separatists in Northern Ireland and Puerto Rican separatists in the US, and on post-9/11 issues concerning basic freedoms in both countries "Unleashing the Force of Law uses multi-jurisdiction empirical data and draws on cause lawyering, political lawyering and Bourdieusian juridical field literature to analyze the invocation of legal norms aimed at the protection of basic freedoms in times of national security tensions. It asks three main questions about the protection of basic freedoms. First, when do lawyers mobilize for the protection of basic freedoms? Second, in what kind of mobilization do they engage? Third, how do the strategies they adopt relate to the outcomes they achieve? Covering the last five decades, the book focuses on the 1980s and the Noughties through an analysis of legal work for two groups of independence seekers in the 1980s, namely, Republican (mostly Catholic) separatists in Northern Ireland and Puerto Rican separatists in the US, and on post-9/11 issues concerning basic freedoms in both countries"--Back cover Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 1-19 Front Matter ....Pages 21-22 Counterterror Measures and Challenges in Law (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 23-39 Security, Exceptionalism, and the Rule of Law (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 40-57 Front Matter ....Pages 59-60 The Guantánamo Bay Juridical Field (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 61-76 Legal Mobilization and Motivations (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 77-93 The 1980s Northern Irish Juridical Field (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 94-112 The Post-9/11 English and Northern Irish Juridical Fields (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 113-128 Front Matter ....Pages 129-130 Legal Formalism and the Right to Liberty (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 131-150 Process and Substance in Outcome (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 151-180 Front Matter ....Pages 181-181 The Force of Law Unleashed? (Devyani Prabhat)....Pages 183-195 Back Matter ....Pages 196-225 An interdisciplinary, comparative study of the work of lawyers for civil liberties and basic freedoms, integrating socio-legal theoretical frameworks with insights from political lawyering and social movement literature, in order to trace the professionalization of human rights work and analyse the possibilities and limitations of the rule of law.