Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition

University of Chicago Press, November 2008

Excerpt: “The rise of conservative public interest law groups has coincided with a substantial decline in the fortunes of liberal public interest law. The more conservative composition of the federal judiciary resulting from appointments by presidents Reagan and Bush I and II, legislative restrictions on lawyers’ activities, and cutbacks in funding for legal services programs have encouraged the retreat of many progressive lawyers from a bold vision of their roles in social change through law reform to a more modest and circumscribed part in community-based political action. But the same conditions that have discouraged progressive lawyers have emboldened conservative activists.”

Praise: “In this fine book Ann Southworth paints a group portrait of these lawyers—business lawyers, libertarians, social and religious conservatives—and of their backgrounds, strategies and conflicting ideas and aspirations. This is a really illuminating book. It is one the best studies of the legal profession I’ve seen in recent years. It is imaginative in concept and design. The reader comes away with confidence that he has been given a reliable and deeply insightful account of an important social phenomenon.”
—Robert W. Gordon, Professor of Law, Yale Law School