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Community Lawyering REVIEW ESSAY Community Lawyering REBELLIOUS LAWYERING: ONE CHICANO'S VISION OF PROGRESSIVE LAW PRACTICE. By Gerald P. L6pez." Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, Inc., 1992. Pp. ix, 433. Paper. Reviewed by Angelo N. Ancheta$ "Give us something we can use." For those of us engaged in the practice of law for social change,' this is a familiar admonition directed at scholars who have developed theories on the transformation of law and the legal system. Critical legal studies,2 feminist legal theory,3 and t Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School. I Executive Director, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles; Cooperating Attorney, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. A.B. 1983, J.D. 1986, University of California, Los Angeles. Copyright © 1993 by California Law Review, Inc. and Asian Law Journal. Most of the work on this Review Essay was completed while I was on staff at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California; I gratefully acknowledge that office's support in helping develop many of the ideas here. Special thanks to Mari Matsuda, Jill Medina, and Mona Tawatao for commenting on earlier versions of this Essay, and to the editors of the Asian Law Journal and the CaliforniaLaw Review for their thoughtful revisions. 1. Throughout this piece, the terms "lawyering for social change" and "progressive law practice" are used interchangeably to refer to work in which individuals with legal training address the problems of subordinated groups that historically have suffered disadvantage as a result of this country's social customs, economic systems, and laws. The definition encompasses a broad array of attorneys, including those employed in civil and criminal legal aid offices helping indigent clients; civil litigators using the courts to bring about systemic changes in the laws and in social and economic institutions; and lawyers who work specifically on behalf of disempowered communities, such as people of color, immigrants and refugees, women, gay men and lesbians, the physically and mentally disabled, and the elderly. 2. For an overview of critical legal studies (CLS), see CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES (Allan C. Hutchinson ed., 1989) (anthology of CLS works); MARK KELMAN, A GUIDE TO CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES (1987) (presenting summary and self-critical assessment of recurring themes in CLS writings); Symposium, CriticalLegal Studies, 36 STAN. L. REV. 1 (1984) (presenting perspectives of CLS scholars and "outside observers"); Mark Tushnet, CriticalLegal Studies: A Political History, 100 YALE L.J. 1515 (1991); see also THE POLITICS OF LAW: A PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE (David Kairys ed., rev. ed. 1990) (containing essays by scholars in CLS, feminist legal theory, and critical race theory). 3. See, e.g., CATHARINE A. MACKINNON, FEMINISM UNMODIFIED: DISCOURSES ON LIFE AND LAW (1987); Katharine T. Bartlett, Feminist Legal Methods, 103 HARV. L. REV. 829 (1990) (identifying and critically examining methods of feminist legal scholarship); Christine A. Littleton, Reconstructing Sexual Equality, 75 CALIF. L. REV. 1279 (1987) (proposing "equality as acceptance" as a theoretical model for gender equality); Frances Olsen, The Sex of Law, in THE POLITICS OF LAW, supra note 2, at 453 (analyzing the sexual and hierarchical dualism of law); Ann C. Scales, The Emergence of FeministJurisprudence: An Essay, 95 YALE L.J. 1373 (1986) (noting the failure of abstraction as a tool for finding solutions to problems of inequality and discussing a feminist 1363 1364 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 81:1363 critical race theory4 -schools of thought that challenge the assumptions that traditional jurisprudence is neutral, determinate, apolitical, and fair-hold the promise of changing the law to accomplish economic and social justice. Narrative theory5 and the recent "theoretics of practice" literature6 test the presuppositions of both legal doctrine and the lawyer- ing process, reexamining commonly held views of language, knowledge, and power within the legal system. Yet the new legal theories, while injecting fresh perspectives into legal scholarship, have not found a large audience outside the academic setting. To their credit, these legal theo- rists have focused on transforming law and lawyering to address the problems of the poor, people of color, immigrants, women, gays and les- bians, the disabled, the elderly, and other subordinated groups. But they have paid little attention to ways of actually implementing doctrinal changes through the courts and other legal decision-makers, which are inherently conservative and often hostile to change. And only recently have scholars discussed how transformative theories can influence the practice of law itself: the day-to-day activities of lawyers who interact with clients, their communities, and the legal and political systems that affect everyone's lives.7 This area of thought has benefited significantly from Professor Gerald P. L6pez's book, Rebellious Lawyering: One Chi- alternative); Robin West, Jurisprudenceand Gender, 55 U. CHI. L. REV. 1 (1988) (contrasting feminist jurisprudence with mainstream "masculine" jurisprudence). 4. See, e.g., DERRICK BELL, FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM (1992) (discussing how racism is a permanent, pervasive, and indestructible component of American society); PATRICIA J. WILLIAMS, THE ALCHEMY OF RACE AND RIGHTS (1991); Kimberle W. Crenshaw, Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law, 101 HARV. L. REV. 1331 (1988) (challenging the sensitivity of CLS scholarship to the continuing power of racial discrimination); Richard Delgado, When a Story is Just a Story: Does Voice Really Matter?, 76 VA. L. REV. 95 (1990) (analyzing hostile reactions to critical race theory); Neil Gotanda, A Critique of "Our Constitution is Color-Blind," 44 STAN. L. REV. 1, 2 (1991) (arguing that the "Supreme Court's use of color-blind constitutionalism ... fosters white racial domination"); Charles R. Lawrence III, The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 STAN. L. REV. 317 (1987) (analyzing how unconscious racism affects governmental decision-making); Mari J. Matsuda, Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudencefor the Last Reconstruction, 100 YALE L.J. 1329 (1991) (utilizing critical theories of law to examine the deeper meaning of accent discrimination). 5. See, e.g., Symposium, Legal Storytelling, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2073 (1989) (examining the role of narrative in contemporary legal scholarship); Symposium, Speeches from The Emperor's Old Prose: Reexamining the LanguageofLaw, 77 CORNELL L. REV. 1233 (1992) (examining approaches to lawyering and the translation of stories into legal discourses). 6. See, e.g., Symposium, Theoretics of Practice: The Integration of Progressive Thought and Action, 43 HASTINGS L.J. 717 (1992) (presenting articles on the integration of progressive legal theory into the teaching and practice of law). 7. See, eg., Anthony V. Alfieri, Reconstructive Poverty Law Practice: Learning Lessons of Client Narratives, 100 YALE L.J. 2107 (1991) (analyzing reinterpretations of client stories by a poverty lawyer in the context of his personal experience); Lucie E. White, To Learn and Teach: Lessons from Driefontein on Lawyering and Power, 1988 WiS. L. REV. 699 (presenting a model of "change-oriented lawyering"). The Hastings Law Journal recently devoted over 500 pages to articles discussing the integration of legal theory, legal education, and the progressive practice of law. Symposium, Theoretics of Practice,supra note 6. 1993] COMMUNITY LAWYERING 1365 cano's Vision of Progressive Law Practice [hereinafter Rebellious Lawyering]. In Rebellious Lawyering, Professor L6pez presents a lucid analysis of progressive law practice. Interweaving fictional accounts of lawyers and their clients with theories of legal practice and community organiz- ing, L6pez presents a richly textured portrayal of lawyering based upon the collaboration of lawyers, clients, and the communities in which they live. L6pez argues that progressive practice must be a partnership in which individuals minimize their traditional roles as lawyers and clients; lawyers and clients must share power and combine their overlapping practical knowledge of the world in order to solve problems of subordi- nation. As L6pez suggests throughout Rebellious Lawyering, all of us are lawyers: whether we are helping ourselves, helping others informally by being "lay lawyers," or helping others formally as professional law- yers, we constantly draw upon our personal experiences to interpret and transform the world through problem solving.8 In this Review Essay, I evaluate L6pez's theory of rebellious lawyer- ing in the context of the developing body of scholarship that uses narra- tive and "outsider" 9 perspectives to analyze laws and the legal system. Focusing upon the stories of one outsider community-Asian Pacific Americans°'--I draw upon the concept of the rebellious lawyer in dis- cussing the process of empowering client communities through advocacy and education. In addition to the stories of clients, both real and fic- tional, I will draw upon my personal experiences as a practitioner and as a member of a subordinated racial group to test the limits of rebellious lawyering as a means of effecting social change. Part I of this Review Essay analyzes L6pez's theory of rebellious lawyering as an alternative to conventional theories of progressive
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