In Lawyers and Movements, Scott L. Cummings offers an innovative answer to this age-old question, breaking from the legacy of legal liberalism to reveal the essential, yet underappreciated, work of lawyers in social struggle - redefining legal mobilization in transformative times. Cummings challenges foundational critiques of lawyers as inaccurate and ill-suited to the current context. In response, he advances a new theory of legal mobilization in which control over law is at the heart of legal mobilization. A call to radically rethink how lawyers contribute to change, Lawyers and Movements asserts a timely challenge to democracy in crisis.
Scott L. Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. He is faculty director of the Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, and a longtime member of the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.
----------------------------------------------
MCC students can earn credit for actively participating in the event, provided they read the required chapters and paper(s) and prepare three questions for the Q&A session of the research seminar.
Questions related to the required reading must be submitted to Kálmán Pócza at pocza.kalman@mcc.hu by 11:00 PM on June 3, 2025.
Required Reading: Please contact Kálmán Pócza to obtain the electronic version of the paper.
Submission Deadline: 3 June 2025, 11:00 PM.
Previous Research Seminars
- Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
- Nigel Biggar (Univeristy of Oxford): What’s Wrong with Rights?
- Asanga Welikala (University of Edinburgh): The Common Good and Comparative Constitutional Laws
- John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?
- John Larkin (former Attorney General for Northern Ireland): Judicial Power in the United Kingdom
- Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
- Lee J. Strang (Ohio State University): Originalism's Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution
- Gonzalo Candia (Catholic University of Chile): The Constitution-Making Process in Chile 2019-2024
- Sergio Verdugo (IE University of Madrid): Is it time to abandon the theory of constituent power?
- Aileen Kavanagh (Trinity College Dublin): The Collaborative Constitution