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"We Belong to the Streets": Lawyers and social movements in post-revolution Egypt

In: Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change

Author

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  • Heba M. Khalil

Abstract

This chapter investigates the relationship of cause lawyers to social movements within the context of a transforming legal profession in the Middle East and elsewhere. While the positioning of lawyers vis à vis movements has been the subject of much debate, socio-legal scholarship has often departed from the assumption of an elite legal profession. Using the examples of human rights and community lawyers in Egypt, I argue that the transformation of the legal profession has necessarily transformed lawyers’ relationships to the movements. As the legal profession became more precarious, fragmented, and de-professionalized, lawyer-movement relationships shifted to ones not necessarily defined by otherness, but rather by being part of a movement, albeit only one part. Based on an 18-month ethnography, I show that the liminal position of lawyers in Egypt produces new possibilities of action that hover between the social and the legal, the radical and the institutional, at times using militancy in the courtroom, and at times mobilizing the streets to pressure judges.

Suggested Citation

  • Heba M. Khalil, 2023. ""We Belong to the Streets": Lawyers and social movements in post-revolution Egypt," Chapters, in: Steven A. Boutcher & Corey S. Shdaimah & Michael W. Yarbrough (ed.), Research Handbook on Law, Movements and Social Change, chapter 20, pages 300-312, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:19296_20
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    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781789907674.00029
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