Adam Gearey - Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives that Slide Out of View

Adam Geareys marvelous new book is a leading entry in a new and emerging field of critical legal scholarship that speaks from the heart about one of the most important questions in all legal studies: how is it possible to live an ethical life in the law? Geareys decision to tell the story of 60s poverty lawyers in America, including the roads not taken by them (and subsequently barricaded by politics) is brilliant. But this is not just an American story, for there are universal lessons to be drawn from the journey that the author describes. The book will strike a chord for readers eager to hear more about actually being a progressive member of the legal profession.

Louis Wolcher, Professor Emeritus, Charles I. Stone Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law.

At a time of burgeoning inequality, intensified threat to democratic inclusivity, and renewed neoliberal assault on the welfare state, Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives That Slide Out of View refocuses attention on poverty and poverty law through the lens of critical theory and practice. Surveying diverse strands of the progressive response to poverty in the United States over the past several decades, Gearey draws novel connections, surfaces contradictions in the deployment of law for social change and offers a wide-ranging analysis of a field that defies easy categorization. A timely and thought-provoking study at a critical moment in the struggle for social and economic justice.

Stephen Loffredo, Professor of Law, CUNY Law School.

Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives That Slide Out of View is really a magnificent piece of work, a true excavation and scholarly assessment that traces the tendrils of poverty law and CLS; in essence a return to what used to travel under the name of existential Marxism; but broadened through Buber and Christian radicalism to become a bricolage of humanism, poetry, music and theory. These modes of self-recognition in others suggest the possibility of overcoming alienation, degradation, pure poverty and pain

Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law and Director of Law and Humanities, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Linking critical legal thinking to constitutional scholarship and a practical tradition of US lawyering that is orientated around anti-poverty activism, this book offers an original, revisionist account of contemporary jurisprudence, legal theory and legal activism. The book argues that we need to think in terms of a much broader inheritance for critical legal thinking that derives from the social ethics of the progressive era, new left understandings of creative democracy and radical theology. To this end, it puts jurisprudence and legal theory in touch with recent scholarship on the American left and, indeed, with attempts to recover the legacies of progressive era thinking, the civil rights struggle and the Great Society. Focusing on the theory and practice of poverty law in the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the present day, the book argues that at the heart of both critical and liberal thinking is an understanding of the lawyer as an ethical actor: inspired by faith or politics to appreciate the potential and limits of law in the struggle against economic inequality.

Adam Geareyis Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Poverty Law and Legal Activism

Lives that Slide Out of View

Adam Gearey

First published 2018

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2018 Adam Gearey

The right of Adam Gearey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Names: Gearey, Adam, author.

Title: Poverty law and legal activism : lives that slide out of view / Adam Gearey.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017055109 | ISBN 9781138556058 (hbk)

Subjects: LCSH: Legal assistance to the poor--United States. | Public interest lawyers--United States. | Public welfare--Law and legislation--United States.

Classification: LCC KF336 .G43 2018 | DDC 344.7303/258--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055109

ISBN: 978-1-138-55605-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-15130-4 (ebk)

It seems fitting that a book about working on the self should be written on a sabbatical; or, rather, in a space in between work and the peculiar form of not-working called writing. The inspiration for Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives that Slide Out of View in fact came out of an earlier sojourn at University of California, Berkeley. The energies stored in the Social Protest Archive in particular documents on the new left crackled with ideas that seemed both distant and incredibly present. More recent digging in New York Public Library also revealed exciting xeroxed pamphlets that mixed social science, utopianism and practical organising. Poverty Law and Legal Activism was completed during a period spent as a visiting fellow at the University of Sussex. I would like to thank the Law School for its hospitality. I am writing these acknowledgements against the background of a resurgent Labour campaign for the General Election (and Bernie Sanders speaking at the Brighton Dome). Doorstep persuasion is a far more difficult discipline than academic argument and more pressing.

My thanks to Peter Goodrich, Louis Wolcher, Maria Grahn-Farley and Lucy Finchett-Maddock. Their comments on earlier drafts of this text were exemplary of the generous, creative thought that this book hopes to celebrate. Lou Wolchers comments were pondered walking through a wheat field at dusk on the way back from the Gun Inn under a crescent moon (Lou made me a gift of his copy of People of the Abyss; stock withdrawn from the Belle Isle Branch of the Oklahoma City Library). Anthony Farley, Gavin Clarke, Piyel Haldar, Marinos Diamantides, Mark Perryman, Costas Douzinas, Michelle Everson, Bella Dicks, Kev Monroe, Angela Paccini, Peter Finnemore, Scott Vietch, Dan Matthews, Peter Fitzpatrick, Mark Griffiths, Gilly Schapiro, Tanya Shadrick, Paul Virr, Illan Wall, Gil Leung and Benjamin R. Gearey all provided much-needed support and encouragement in various forms, optics and measures. Thanks also to Hannah Lovelock at Routledge, and Niamh Gearey for the back cover art. Colin Perrin a publisher, thinker and editor of style and nobility my sincere thanks and gratitude. Mary Gearey, the Dorothy Parker of de-growth; divine interlocutor, my love and thanks. Arthur and Niamh, Dionysians, Corbynites, trouble makers I love you guys. Finally, my comrades at Birkbeck and the Critical Legal Conference, I salute you.