Professor Gill. H. Boehringer
Co-Chair, IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers
Introduction
That the legal profession can and does contribute to the development and maintenance of the rule of law and therefore to a democratic polity is a generally accepted, although abstract, concept.
The international community has recognized the importance of lawyers in adopting the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.
In reality the role of lawyers is complicated and contradictory. The law and its institutions are a site of struggle. Judges, prosecutors, attorneys and community justice workers or paralegals, are involved in struggle as are state institutions, the political class, powerful corporations, and other institutions of civil society. The concrete function of some legal professionals is therefore not always simply to support democratic values and the rule of law.
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