Vol. 13 No. 11 (November 2003)
LAWYERS AND VAMPIRES: CULTURAL HISTORIES OF LEGAL PROFESSIONS,
by W. Wesley Pue and David Sugarman (Editors). Oxford and Portland, Oregon:
Hart Publishing, 2003. 399 pp. Cloth £50. ISBN:
1-84113-312-4.
Reviewed by Laura J. Hatcher, Taubman Center for Public
Policy, Brown University. Email:
Laura_Hatcher@brown.edu
Wesley Pue and David Sugarman have produced a fascinating
volume of essays written from various perspectives under the rubric of “cultural
histories.” The collection
constitutes a cross-national survey, including work on Australia, Great
Britain, the U.S., Finland, Germany, Sweden, France, and Canada. Like other recent edited compilations,
most notably the volumes by Halliday and Karpik (1997) and those produced
by the cause lawyer research project (see Scheingold and Sarat 1998 and
2001) that investigate various aspects in development of the legal profession,
these authors have a particular theoretical axe to grind. In this case, the essayists want to understand what knowledge
one can gain from cultural history that will help explain the development
and structure of the legal profession.
Like other compendiums, the approaches here represent a
range of disciplines – in this case, history, law, literature, gender
and visual studies. And, like
those other collections, LAWYERS AND VAMPIRES presents work in various national
settings in an attempt to provide a comparative picture for the reader. Unlike the others, however, the Pue and
Sugarman volume is less concerned with institutional relationships—i.e.,
the relationship between the legal profession and development of western
political liberalism (Halliday and Karpik), or between lawyering and global/state
transformations (Sarat and Scheingold 2001). Instead, these authors are more concerned with cultural dynamics
observable in particular institutions. For this reason the book, initially, seems less interesting
to political scientists than the other volumes mentioned above. However, ignoring this book would be a
mistake: it presents essays with findings that can help us understand the
sociolegal role of the legal profession as an institution within the various
political contexts, encompassing a set of issues of great interest to those
of us who study lawyers and lawyering.
Perhaps even more importantly, the approaches represented here can
trigger ideas concerning what we leave out in our discussions about lawyers
and politics that may be well worth incorporating into our work. The book is not written for undergraduates,
though some advanced undergraduates may find some of the essays useful.
Faculty and graduate students, however, may find the collection quite
valuable.
The intriguing title derives part of its name from Anne
McGillivray’s essay in the third section, “He Would Have Made
a Wonderful Solicitor: Law, Modernity and Profesisonalism in Bram Stoker’s
DRACULA” (pp.225-267). This
essay is an excellent example of the research presented in LAWYERS AND VAMPIRES;
so rather than ddiscussing all the essays, I will briefly sketch out her
argument and approach and then describe the volume as a whole. McGillivray reads DRACULA as a legal novel,
though as she points out, it is not generally considered so by other authorities
(citing Wigmore 1908). Weaving
in discussions of the deep concerns of Victorian writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft,
with modernity, morality and science, McGillivray demonstrates that confusion
regarding modernity and professionalism “suffuse nineteenth-century
debates about the future of the legal profession” (p.235).
She notes that Dracula’s knowledge and expertise are praised
in the novel; yet, “if Dracula is a lawyer, he is a bloodsucker.
His nobility cloaks his corruption” (p.242). McGillivray argues that the juxtaposition of Dracula’s
corrupt nature with his noble image raises issues concerning who should
be a lawyer and how to understand professional activity. By contextualizing the novel within the debates in England
concerning the structure of the bar and the professional activities of lawyers,
she exposes how changes in law and society played out in a key moment in
the history of the legal profession.
I have hardly done justice to McGillivray’s chapter
but did want to present a sense of the richness of the essays in this volume.
They take multiple approaches – drawing on standard historical
methods, as well as insights from social and political theory to produce
analyses that have implications for further research.
For example, for those of us interested in cultural approaches to
law, the essay I described above presents us with possibilities for seeing
the inscription of institutional debates within works of fiction and film
of the same era. Others will find Wesley Pue’s essay,
“Cultural Projects and Structural Transformation,” exploring
how the structural projects of Canadian lawyers gave shape to the professional
forms of contemporary Canadian lawyering, important to developing a framework
within which one might think through how structures can change over time
despite their seeming lack of malleability.
The volume presents a set of essays that thickly describe cultural
practices and moments of contingency, when meaning is re-inscribed, that
promote a fuller understanding of how the complex process of meaning construction
may be linked to processes of social change.
The book is divided into four thematic sections: the Formation
of Lawyers; Lawyers and the Liberal State; Work and Representations; and
Lawyers and Colonialism. The
divisions are helpful to the reader because of the sprawling quality of
the theoretical project the authors have undertaken. One problem with the book may be a difficulty common to edited
volumes—a bit of unevenness among the topics covered, as well as among
the various sections. Some
sections have two essays, others have four. The countries under investigation vary from section to section,
and sometimes it is difficult to compare the findings of one essay with
those of the others within the same section. Yet, for the reader there are several options for navigating
around these problems, not least of which is checking into the works cited
where one will find a range of scholarship that can be used for comparison. This resource would also be quite valuable
for locating potential additional readings, if the book were adopted for
classroom use.
Overall, LAWYERS AND VAMPIRES is a very provocative volume, and it will appeal to many political scientists who are using multiple methods and multidisciplinary approaches in their own work.
REFERENCES:
Halliday, Terence
C. and Lucian Karpik (eds.) 1997.
LAWYERS AND THE RISE OF WESTERN POLITICAL LIBERALISM: EUROPE AND
NORTH AMERICA FROM THE EIGHTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURIES. Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York:
Oxford University Press.
Sarat, Austin
and Stuart Scheingold (eds.) 1998.
CAUSE LAWYERING:
POLITICAL COMMITMENTS AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press.
Sarat, Austin
and Stuart Scheingold (eds.) 2001.
CAUSE LAWYERING
AND THE STATE IN A GLOBAL ERA. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Wigmore, John
Henry. 1908. “A List of 100 Legal Novels,”
2 ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW 574 (cited on p. 226 of LAWYERS AND VAMPIRES).
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Copyright 2003 by the author, Laura J. Hatcher.