Old and New Left Activity in the Legal Order: An Interpretation

When in court cases defendants are accused of fomenting violent revolution or rebellion, persons are allegedly harassed, imprisoned, and otherwise persecuted on the basis of false criminal charges, or radicals identify with the defendants as victims of economic, cultural, or racial injustice, then so‐called political or ideological trials occur. Although relationships between Old Left and New Left attorneys and clients vary and ideological and tactical differences continue to divide them, a reasonably coherent litigation strategy has been developed for dealing with these cases. It supplements the appropriate use of conventional legal procedures with variations of mass action, publicity, and confrontation. In the past only a small number of Old Left attorneys were willing to conduct litigation in this manner, but more recently the activities of the New Left movements have produced an additional array of movement lawyers. In meeting their responsibility to revolutionaries, the author suggests, these radical lawyers could be contributing to the basic morality of American law.