Providential Democracy: An Essay on Contemporary Equality by Dominique Schnapper

Author:Dominique Schnapper [Schnapper, Dominique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Democracy, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781351496094
Google: iD4rDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35635053
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

From “Classical Law” to “Corporate Law”

The practice of law provides an example of a profession which, while continuing to invoke the singularity of its “mission,” has—for an increasing number of lawyers—reconverted itself and entered the competitive economic marketplace, thus relinquishing the specificity of an original relationship. The fluctuation between practicing a liberal profession linked to defending individuals—a political vocation, a mission associated with human rights—and participating in the competitive economic sector explains how the world of lawyers has divided. Some lawyers continue to refer to the “classical bar” (the “barreau classique”) and to its vocation, while others now refer to the “corporate law bar” (the “barreau d’affaires”).63

The former, who are still more numerous in France, conform to norms inherited from the “liberal” law profession of the past, even if this heritage has been “noticeably altered”; they reject the idea of exercising an ordinary profession subjected to the logic of competition. They continue to invoke their political vocation (and the services that they provide to individuals), their defense of human rights, and their respect for fundamental freedoms. They thereby underscore the originality of a relationship based on mutual confidence between two human beings. This relationship recalls the singular dialogue between a doctor and his patient: the service provided integrates two human beings into a personal and political exchange in which commercial notions are secondary. This ideology of a political vocation is inscribed, symbolically speaking, in a great tradition going back to Ancient Greece, including for instance Antigone’s defense against Creon’s demands and the reason of State. For lawyers, it is a conception inherited from a glorious tradition that “is maintained as an almost natural predisposition, handed down from one generation to the next, and always ready to be reactivated.”64 According to this model, the laws governing a lawyer’s professional relationships with his fellow lawyers—as in the case of medical doctors—fortify and symbolize the non-mercantile nature of a lawyer’s relationships with both his clients and his colleagues. The French national bar association—the “Ordre des Avocats”—attempted to keep this vocation alive, until the Law of 1990.

This law henceforth authorizes another model of legal practice, that of the “corporate law bar.” The expected consequences of the economic liberalization associated with the Treaty of Rome revealed the crisis of the liberal profession—the “classical bar”—of law practice. It became necessary to help all French legal professions face up to international competition, in France as abroad. Indeed, French lawyers were faced with the dual competition of Anglo-American law offices—which had fully adopted the transformation of the profession—and auditing and accounting firms that were directly working for business firms and corporations. The Law of 1990 offered a compromise. It attempted to limit the consequences of the economic market and competition, and to maintain the great tradition of law practice, all the while giving lawyers the means to enter the world of business firms and corporations.65 The law marked the end of a purely liberal profession, but it also limited the transformation of the practice of law into a capitalist enterprise.

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