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This book focuses on the history of the provision of legal aid and legal assistance to the poor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in eight different countries. It is the first such book to bring together historical work on legal aid in a comparative perspective, and allows readers to analogise and contrast historical narratives about free legal aid across countries. Legal aid developed as a result of industrialisation, urbanization, immigration, the rise of philanthropy, and what were viewed as new legal problems. Closely related, was the growing professionalisation of lawyers and the question of what duties lawyers owed society to perform free work. Yet, legal aid providers in many countries included lay women and men, leading at times to tensions with the bar. Furthermore, legal aid often became deeply politicized, creating dramatic conflicts concerning the rights of the poor to have equal access to justice.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Understanding the History of Legal Aid in an International and Comparative Perspective.- Chapter 2. The Persistent Question of Legal Aid in the Professional Development of Russian Lawyers.- Chapter 3. From pro Deo to pro Pecunia. An Institutional History of Legal Aid in Belgium.- Chapter 4.The Historical Evolution of Legal Aid in China from the Perspective of Globalisation (1890-2003).- Chapter 5.For Workers and for the Disadvantaged: Legal Advice Centres in Germany from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century.- Chapter 6."To Poor and Rich Alike": Legal Modernisation, the Women's Movement, and Legal Aid in Late Nineteenth-Century Finland.- Chapter 7.Lawyers Providing Legal Aid in Print: Legal Question and Answer Columns in Finnish Newspapers around 1900.- Chapter 8.The Organisation of l'Assistance judiciaire, The Politics of Poverty, and the Rewriting of History in Nineteenth-Century France.- Chapter 9.Training and Disciplining Lawyersthrough Legal Aid: Chile, 1932-1960s.- Chapter 10.Archival Confrontations and Rewriting the History of Legal Aid in the United States./
About the author
Felice Batlan is Professor of Law and affiliated Professor of the Humanities at IIT Chicago-Kent, USA. She is the author of the award-winning Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945 (2015). Her research focuses on the legal history of women and gender in the U.S. and internationally.
Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen is University Lecturer in Legal History at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the author of Learning Law and Travelling Europe: Study Journeys and the Developing Swedish Legal Profession (2020), and several articles on the history of legal education, the legal profession, and the courts.
Report
"This volume brings together an excellent set of national case studies, with the chapters serving as standalone introductions alongside collectively building on the volume's themes and threads. González Le Saux and Batlan also bring out issues of methodology and sources, which are extremely welcome. ... the volume ably demonstrates the potential for intellectual enquiry that takes legal aid history beyond national borders and should be a strong encouragement to others to take up this agenda." (Kate Bradley, Comparative Legal History, October 18, 2023)
