This week Dr. Devyani Prabhat, lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol Law School, launched her latest book Unleashing the Force of Law: Legal Mobilization, National Security, and Basic Freedoms published in the Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies series.

Unleashing the Force of Law answers three main questions about the protection of these basic freedoms: when do lawyers mobilize for the protection of basic freedoms? In what sort of mobilization do they engage? And how do the strategies they adopt affect their outcomes? Spanning over the last five decades, the book focuses on the analysis of the work lawyers did for basic freedoms in the 1980s, at the time of peak of the Conflict in Northern Ireland, and Puerto Rican separatist movement in the United States, as well as modern day legal mobilization for basic freedoms post 9/11.

At the event Dr Prabhat presented the main arguments of the book and discussed how the book was born out of an initial puzzle. Back in the early days of mobilization against holding prisoners in Guantanamo Bay she wondered why Guantanamo Bay attracted so much attention from lawyers when there were many people languishing in immigration detention all over the US. This led to a broader enquiry into what happens when the ordinary rules of the game are changed; these are suspended or changed. How does the legal profession respond to that change? Thus, national security provides the context for the research and the focus is on the legal profession.

An expert panel of five scholars who study the legal profession using socio-legal methods discussed the book and its potential impact on their own research. Chairing the panel, series editor Professor Dave Cowan said that the series focuses on books that are methodologically innovative and reflective. Commenting on Unlocking the Force of Law, Professor Cowan said, ‘The book is a sturdy, provocative study of lawyering; 75 interviews and taken from a very methodologically rigorous perspective, drawing on and developing a Bourdieusian method and theory.’

Professor Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics, Director of the Centre for Ethics and Law, UCL, was a panelist at the event. His work focuses on lawyers’ ethics, professional competence, the regulation of legal services and access to justice, and at present he is carrying out a large study on in-house lawyers. He said that he found the central findings of the book persuasive and important. For him the core ideas in the book of neutrality and transgression as well as mobilisation were important, as was the use of Bourdieu in a different way than usually employed by researchers.

Professor Morag McDermont, whose project is about voluntary advice sector workers located in the juridical field, said the book is important in looking at the use or the non-use of rights work in order to advance social change. There is a real potential of using book in terms of looking at the use of Bourdieu in studies of the legal profession. Another scholar, Jessica Hambly, whose research is on advocates in the asylum processes pointed out that there is over optimism and overconfidence of lawyers now in the formal legal possibilities of law. Too much faith in the promise of legal and formal and procedural guarantees in law and this is one of the findings about present day work for basic freedoms in Unleashing the Force of Law as well. Pablo Fuenzalida, whose research is on legal aid and admission to practise in Chile, said that the book threw light on his work on the emergence of access to justice as a distinct right through legal mobilization; particularly of an inconsistent nature.

The panel discussion was followed by a lively question and answer session with the audience and a celebration of the book with coffee and cake.