In modern society, lawyers have become increasingly mobile practitioners. The twentieth century witnessed the expansion in the scope of lawyers' practice from towns to cities, nation-states to continents. The process has culminated in the internationalization of business law firms
The Chinese judicial system has long been influenced by a populist legal ideology that prioritizes public accountability and political legitimacy over professional autonomy. In recent years, however, the Chinese legal profession has begun to mobilize collectively, albeit episodically, to challenge this populism. Drawing on legal documents, interviews, media reports, and online discussions, this paper provides a scholarly analysis of the Li Zhuang case in 2009−11, in which the fate of an individual criminal defence lawyer was linked with the main ideological conflict in China’s legal system and the highest-level political struggles in the Chinese state. It demonstrates that, although populism remains an intimidating force in China’s judicial practice, lawyers, scholars, and other legal professionals may be laying a foundation for collective solidarity to pursue professionalism through their mobilization against populism.
This article examines the dramaturgical challenges of doing boundary work for a group of college women living with non-college women at an overcrowded rental. To regulate tenant conduct and maintain their sense of self-worth, the college women engaged in defensive othering and constructed their identity as "high-quality" people on the basis of their characterization of their less-educated roommates as "low-quality" people. Their strategy of gaining self-worth at their roommates' expense violated basic rules of social interaction that require participants to give face to gain face. This study shows that, in addition to weakening group solidarity and reproducing social inequalities, defensive othering also undermines subordinates' effort to gain self-worth in the co-presence of other subordinates. A video abstract is available at http://tinyurl.com/yath4o65
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