scholarly journals A Random Stroll Amongst Anthony Trollope's Lawyers

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Fishman

Abstract Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) resides in the pantheon of nineteenth century English literature. While working full time in his postal position until 1867, he still managed to publish 47 novels, travel books, biographies, short stories, collections of essays, and articles on various topics. Trollope has been described as the novelist of the ordinary for his realistic description of English society. Law and legal issues flow through Trollope's fiction. The legal system held a special importance to him as the skeleton upholding the social and political framework of the country. Over one hundred lawyers appear in his work and eleven of his novels feature trials or hearings. The law intrigued and exasperated him. Along with the lawyers and legal issues he depicts are ideas of the law and legal system that are part of elaborate philosophical and jurisprudential traditions, which he recognized. This article examines Trollope's changing attitude toward lawyers. It describes the structure of the Bar in terms of class, status and reputation. Trollope believed the legal system should ensure justice, and those who labored in the law should be the vehicle of that pursuit. Justice for Trollope was the meting out of rewards and punishments as the consequence of a right or wrong decision. However, the law, as he depicted it, was often an impediment to this process, and lawyers were unreliable guides. Initially Trollope portrayed lawyers critically as caricatures as evinced by such names as Alwinde, O’Blather, Slow & Bideawhile, Haphazard, and Chaffanbrass. He was outraged that barristers (lawyers who appear in court) put loyalty to their clients ahead of the search for truth and justice. The adversary system was flawed as the enactment of laws in accord with the laws of nature assumes an inbuilt moral compass in humans that contains self-evident truths of right and wrong. Trollope felt there was no reason why a right-minded person could not intuitively recognize the truth, so criminal law's adversary system was unnecessary. The legal system sought not the discovery of the truth but was more interested in aiding the guilty defendant to escape punishment. As he matured as a writer and achieved success, Trollope's understanding and appreciation of the legal profession changed. He met and become friends with leaders of the Bar, and they influenced his descriptions of lawyers, who became realistic and often admirable human beings. Beyond the legal problems of its characters, Trollope's later novels incorporated the social, political, and jurisprudential issues of the times and engaged the Victorian legal culture in a broader sense of history, traditions, continuity and change. Natural law principles were challenged during the Victorian era by positivist notions that law is what the statute books say. These divisions lurk in the background of his later portraits of lawyers and the legal system. In his later period Trollope created a realistic characterization of the legal profession at the time that offered universal insights into human nature.

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-285
Author(s):  
Schyler P. Simmons

The relationship between human beings and companion pets is changing. For purposes of this Comment, companion pets are the dogs and cats that people share their homes with. Today, more households have a dog or cat than children. Despite the social changes, companion pets are still classified as property. At some point in history, minors, women, and slaves were also classified as property. Through social revolutions, such as the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Women’s Rights Movement, property classification for humans was dismantled. This Comment discusses the progression of minors’ rights and protections and how companion pets have gained similar rights and protections in various areas of the law. However, despite the increase in rights, companion pets still lack the ability to have status or standing in the legal system for the protection or promotion of their interests. Minors also do not have the ability to sue or be sued. Nevertheless, a guardianship system has developed in order to protect minors’ interest until the minors reach the age of majority. Guardians have certain duties and responsibility to minors. Owners of companion pets are not considered guardians, and courts do not appoint guardians; thus, those duties and responsibilities that protect minors do not apply to companion pets. In conclusion, this Comment argues that the next logical step for increasing the rights of companion pets is to establish a guardianship system similar to the system for minors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-73
Author(s):  
Naomi Sayers

The Law Society of Ontario (formerly, the Law Society of Upper Canada) oversees the legal profession in Ontario, Canada, through The Rules of Professional Conduct (‘Rules’). All future lawyers and paralegals must adhere to the Rules. The Law Society sometimes provides guidance on sample policies informed by the Rules. In this article, the author closely examines the Law Society’s guidance on social media. The author argues that this guidance fails to understand how the Rules regulate experiences out of the legal profession and fails to see the positive possibilities of social media to influence social change, especially in ways that conflict with the colonial legal system. The author concludes that the Law Society must take a positive approach and provide some guidance for the legal profession on their social media use, especially around critiquing the colonial legal system. This positive approach is essential to avoid duplicating the systems and structures that perpetuate disadvantage in marginalized communities.


Author(s):  
Martin Partington

This chapter discusses the role both of those professionally qualified to practise law and of other groups who provide legal services but who are not formally qualified as lawyers. It examines how regulation of legal services providers has changed. It notes new forms of legal practice. It considers the adjudicators and other dispute resolvers who play a significant role in the working of the legal system. It reflects on the contribution made by law teachers, in universities and in private colleges, to the formation of the legal profession and to the practice of the law.


Author(s):  
Martin Partington

This chapter discusses the role both of those professionally qualified to practise law—solicitors and barristers—and of other groups who provide legal/advice services but who do not have professional legal qualifications. It examines how regulation of legal services providers is changing. It notes new forms of legal practice. It also considers how use of artificial intelligence may change the ways in which legal services are delivered. It reflects on the adjudicators and other dispute resolvers who play a significant role in the working of the legal system. It reflects on the contribution to legal education made by law teachers, in universities and in private colleges, to the formation of the legal profession and to the practice of the law.


2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 420-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Dudley

I am now going to transfer you rapidly from the global information service to a locally targeted and focused legal information service designed to meet the particular needs of a small jurisdiction like Northern Ireland.SLS Legal Publications was established in 1980 as a unique and profoundly innovative experiment in Northern Ireland (N.I.). Its continued existence 20 years later is testament to the fact that it has not only become a success story but is now an integral part of the legal system in Northern Ireland. SLS Legal Publications is a legal publishing and training company based within the Queen's University of Belfast (QUB) and sponsored by the NICS, the Law Society of N.I. and the Bar Council of N.I. QUB's sponsorship takes the form of the provision of accommodation and accounting services. The purpose of SLS is to provide a legal information service in various ways to the Northern Ireland legal profession and the wider community and I will expand on those various ways later in this talk.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Sébastien Lafrance

AbstractThis paper explores various impacts of artificial intelligence (“AI”) on the law, and the practice of law more specifically, for example the use of predictive tools. The author also examines some of the innovations but also limits of AI in the context of the legal profession as well as some ethical and legal issues raised by the use and evolution of AI in the legal area.


Pólemos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-155
Author(s):  
Daniela Carpi

Abstract Elizabeth I’s portraits span more than 40 years of her reign: during this time her courtiers commissioned paintings that developed both her own image and a complex set of symbols that transmitted her power. These paintings, together with other iconological representations of her sovereignty, embody her personal way to advertise her own power and keep her subjects within the fascination of her figure. By commissioning portraits of the Queen her courtiers both expressed their loyalty to her and helped to develop the wide range of emblems and visual devices through which her propaganda could be promulgated. The analysis of the symbols interwoven with the dresses which enwrapped the Queen in her portraits conveys both the social situation of the period and Elizabeth’s will to impose her figure as divine so as to stress her legitimacy to the throne. The problem of power, legitimacy and legality are all intertwined in the dresses: the yarn that is spun by the painter’s brush represents the rules that keep society together. It symbolises the legal system with all its paraphernalia and anticipates an awareness for those in power to advertise their image which typifies our age. The fundamental function of clothing in making or unmaking a person’s status within society is often used in Renaissance plays. In many passages of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for example, clothing is clearly connected to authority and it becomes the central device in the taming process itself.


Author(s):  
Linda Demaine ◽  
Robert Cialdini

This chapter explores “social influence and the law,” which we conceptualize as consisting of three parts: (1) social influence in the legal system, (2) the legal regulation of social influence in our everyday lives, and (3) law as an instrument of social influence. Within each part, we identify the primary topics that psychologists have studied empirically and review the existing research. The chapter thus highlights the many and varied contributions of psychologists related to social influence and the law. The chapter also reveals a marked imbalance in the social influence and law literature—the vast majority of psychological research falls within the first part, despite the fact that the second and third parts capture equally or more important topics from both legal and psychological viewpoints. We end the chapter by explaining this uneven distribution of effort and urging psychologists to take a broader approach to social influence and the law.


1981 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
Vittorio Denti

A discussion on the neutrality of the lawyer requires some preliminary elucidation. Indeed, as concerns the judge's function, the term “neutrality” is generally used in connection with diverse principles such as: (a) the judge's impartiality with regard to parties, a basic element characterizing the adversary process, according to a tradition dating back to classical liberalism; (b) the judge's neutrality with regard to the law, typical of codified law systems where political choices are entrusted to the legislative power, the judge being a mere interpreter of the law, according to objective criteria; (c) the judge's independence of the other public powers, and thus his autonomy with regard to the aims pursued by the legislative and executive powers.We will not dwell here on the fact that the principle of the judge's neutrality, according to the liberal tradition, is now undergoing a crisis, in connection with the evolution of modern states. Together with the principle of the judge's neutrality, this same tradition also developed, though in a markedly different sense, the principle of the lawyer's neutrality, which became deeply rooted in the conception of the legal profession; the common inheritance of all liberal states up to the social revolutions of the 20th century. This “neutrality” encompasses different aspects of the legal profession, whose common matrix can be found, on the one hand, in the social composition of lawyers as a class and in the viewing of the legal profession as a “liberal” profession; and on the other, in the characteristics of legal education in the 19th century law schools.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-406
Author(s):  
LeAnn Snow Flesher

The pericope in Jas 2:14–17 has become iconic in our modern church culture. Although we quote from it regularly—“faith without works is dead”—we do not live it faithfully. In reimagining the body of Christ, the theme of this issue, it seems that the book of James and Luther’s response to it reflect the tensions we live in today. We are a society with a legal system built off the ideology of retributive justice. We are a society that claims to be built on Christian principles, yet James points to a very different justice system. James 2:13 states that “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” Although James never condones breaking the law (2:10–11), he does encourage mercy in place of judgment (2:13), especially when engaging the poor. Luther called biblical James a “book of straw,” as he touted his own mantra, sola fide, leaving us with a very significant dilemma. How should we understand saving faith? Does it simply require praying “the sinner’s prayer and shaking the pastor’s hand?” or ought it to be coupled with “works” becoming to one who has chosen to follow Jesus?


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