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Histories of Legal Aid

A Comparative and International Perspective

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Editors:
  1. Felice Batlan

    1. Chicago Kent College of Law, Chicago, USA

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  2. Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen

    1. Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

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  • Provides important new research on the history of legal aid and re-evaluates older theories
  • Seeks to understand the development of legal aid as part of a transnational phenomenon
  • Examines how legal aid could be connected to liberalism, state building projects, capitalism and Progressive-era reform

Part of the book series: World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence (WHCCV)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. Introduction: Understanding the History of Legal Aid in an International and Comparative Perspective

    • Felice Batlan, Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen
    Pages 1-26

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 319-330
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Keywords

About this book

This book focuses on the history of the provision of legal aid and legal assistance to the poor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in eight different countries. It is the first such book to bring together historical work on legal aid in a comparative perspective, and allows readers to analogise and contrast historical narratives about free legal aid across countries. Legal aid developed as a result of industrialisation, urbanization, immigration, the rise of philanthropy, and what were viewed as new legal problems. Closely related, was the growing professionalisation of lawyers and the question of what duties lawyers owed society to perform free work. Yet, legal aid providers in many countries included lay women and men, leading at times to tensions with the bar. Furthermore, legal aid often became deeply politicized, creating dramatic conflicts concerning the rights of the poor to have equal access to justice.

Reviews

“This volume brings together an excellent set of national case studies, with the chapters serving as standalone introductions alongside collectively building on the volume’s themes and threads. González Le Saux and Batlan also bring out issues of methodology and sources, which are extremely welcome. … the volume ably demonstrates the potential for intellectual enquiry that takes legal aid history beyond national borders and should be a strong encouragement to others to take up this agenda.” (Kate Bradley, Comparative Legal History, October 18, 2023)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Chicago Kent College of Law, Chicago, USA

    Felice Batlan

  • Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen

About the editors

Felice Batlan is Professor of Law and affiliated Professor of the Humanities at IIT Chicago-Kent, USA.  She is the author of the award-winning Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863-1945 (2015). Her research focuses on the legal history of women and gender in the U.S. and internationally.


Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen is University Lecturer in Legal History at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the author of Learning Law and Travelling Europe: Study Journeys and the Developing Swedish Legal Profession (2020), and several articles on the history of legal education, the legal profession, and the courts.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Histories of Legal Aid

  • Book Subtitle: A Comparative and International Perspective

  • Editors: Felice Batlan, Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen

  • Series Title: World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80271-4

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-80270-7Published: 13 January 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-80273-8Published: 14 January 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-80271-4Published: 12 January 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2730-9630

  • Series E-ISSN: 2730-9649

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 330

  • Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Social History, Cultural History, World History, Global and Transnational History, Legal History, Crime and Society

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