To Lead with Law: Reassessing The Influence of Legal Advocacy Organizations

The NAACP’s early successes with test-case litigation created a model for using law as a social movement strategy that has since been replicated by advocates for such wide-ranging interest groups as consumers, environmentalists, gays and lesbians, economic libertarians, and the poor. Today, organizations that specialize in planned litigation continue to proliferate, despite critiques from both the political left and right about the efficacy of litigation strategies as tools for social reform (Handler 1978; Horowitz 1977; Rosenberg 1991). Indeed, this proliferation of legal advocacy organizations across movements suggests that litigation must provide some benefits to social movements; otherwise the prevalence of these groups makes neither organizational nor political sense (see Morag-Levine 2001). And, in fact, a growing literature on cause lawyering has identified a litany of ways in which litigation strategies can benefit social movements. Within this literature, a number of sociolegal scholars emphasize the heterogeneity of social movements (Hunt 1990; McCann 1998; Olson 1984). Contemporary American social movements are collective challenges by organizations engaging in a wide range of strategies and tactics, but with common purposes and social solidarities (c.f., Tarrow 1998). Sociolegal researchers have stressed the importance o