Law, according to Liora Israel, is not only a system of standards, but also a social and political weapon. His work takes stock of the growing appropriations of law by the social sciences and opens up avenues for reflection, in particular on the question of the legitimacy of legal forms in contemporary societies.
Law is a system of standards but also, and inseparably, a “ armed Social and political: the heart of the subject of the work of Liora Israel, published in the collection “ Challenge »At the Presses de Sciences Po, is well summarized by its title. It is still necessary to add that this weapon can be seized by very diverse actors, and that it is protean. Indeed, sometimes “ shield “, Sometimes” sword “, The law can be as much the instrument of the rulers as of the opponents, as much the offensive or defensive weapon of political power as of the groups and the movements which dispute it.
Control or contestation tool ?
This observation may seem obvious, there are many studies that seize these multiple appropriations of the legal weapon today. However, as the author recalls in the first chapter of her work, she only imposed herself recently, for a reason for both scientific and political. Historically, law is first perceived and analyzed as a powerful tool available to the State to guarantee social order and control, or even punish, those who seek to question it. This conception “ dominocentric “(To resume, out of context, the term forged by Claude Grignon and Jean-Claude Passeon), whose analysis by Marx of” flight of wood Is the best theoretical illustration, has therefore long been obliterated, research on the protest dimensions of law, as much as its practical uses. It is thanks to a particular situation, that of the 1970s and the multiple mobilizations that it sees born, that “ rediscovery This hidden side of law, at the border of research and activism. The movements of the 1970s are indeed, in many cases, led to fight within the institutions (judicial, psychiatric, penitentiary, migration, etc.) and to seize the legal tool to return it against them. Thus emerges in practice, and in the scientific field, the idea of a “ reversibility »Law.
On the epistemological level, this emergence corresponds to an increasing seizure of the legal object by the social sciences, and in particular by the sociology of collective action. Attentive to the actors and the resources of the protest, and to the action directories (to use the concept of Charles Tilly) implemented by the mobilized groups, this branch of sociology has found in the uses of the law particularly field of research rich. And it is to restore its achievements, in a synthetic form, that most of the work is devoted.
The lawyer, warrior of legal struggles
Liora Israel begins by turning, in Chapter 2, towards a logically central figure in this reflection: the lawyer. Lawyers are indeed not only a body of law professionals, but also a social group intimately linked to the history of Western democracies. Already underlined by Tocqueville, the political role of lawyers has been highlighted by numerous works (including particularly those of Lucien Karpik, with regard to the French case), which retrace the progressive constitution, from the Enlightenment and the Revolution, of the figure of the lawyer as a defender of freedoms, “ playing law as a weapon against power (P. 49). But it is precisely the limits of this work, by too generalizing and globalizing in their association between legal profession and political liberalism, which make it possible to introduce to a more “approach” concrete (P. 84) and practice of the uses of law as a defense weapon of a cause. The work gathered under the label of Cause Lawyering allow us to grasp the complexity of these uses, at the same time as their strategic scope.
This current of research, resulting from the sociology of North American law, seeks to grasp, through multiple and wide varied cases of cases, the “ transformation of political struggles by law (P. 65). Chapter 3 of the book restores the contributions of this approach, attentive to the sociology of mobilized professionals, to the repertoire of action implemented and to the construction of causes, and, more broadly, to interactions between judicial arena and historical context . By briefly rereading through this prism the history of legal struggles in France, Liora Israel clearly shows its fertility. This does not of course prevent the demonstration of certain limits of Cause Lawyeringrelating to the sometimes too obvious articulation between political use of law and progressive orientation, or to a certain sociological idealism of the model. However, according to the author, this approach has enabled numerous advances in understanding the interactions between law and mobilizations.
Legitimacy, issue of struggle
But what is, ultimately, the base on which this acting power is based ? This question crosses the last chapter of The weapon of law. In this area, it seems essential to return to the analyzes of Max Weber: this is indeed the question of legitimacy carried by the standard which is at the heart of the question on the political and social power of law. The law is indeed, in very variable historical and political contexts, a lever for legitimization/delegitimation of political regimes and their actors. Then there is a complex and ambivalent relationship between legitimacy and legality: as the author says, “ The struggle by law is thus largely a struggle on the legitimacy of power and the sources of its recognition (P. 104). This is particularly the case in situations of political transitions, and specifically the release of the Second World War, whose analysis also makes it possible to ask the question of “ temporalities “Of justice (p. 111), from different angles: retroactivity, imprescriptibility, or even preventive role of the standard. The author also underlines that there is the starting point for the internationalization of judicial institutions and therefore, consequently, that of legal struggles. But if the development of international criminal justice opens up new mobilization opportunities, and allows the development of unprecedented judicial strategies, the internationalization of the legal field is still fragile, and encounters many obstacles.
This observation is extended in the conclusion analysis of Liora Israel, insisting to finish on the limits and ambivalences of the legal weapon in the current social context. And it is the merit of this work that, in a format yet limited, not to be limited to an analysis of the relationships between law and mobilizations, but to clear how this analysis offers more general light on the place of law in society. The weapon of law Thus fully fulfilled his double objective: to offer a synthesis and to open avenues for reflection.