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Case Sensitive: Lawyers and the Formation of Legal Arguments in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2021

Jessica E. Hickle
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Abstract

This article uses evidence from Tanzanian lawyers and legal experts to advance a novel lawyer-centered explanation for Tanzania’s low levels of rights litigation. Like in many countries, Tanzanian citizens who pursue litigation depend on the presence, ideas, and guidance of lawyers. To understand patterns of litigation in Tanzania, therefore, we need to understand how lawyers make choices about their cases. Such knowledge is crucial to understanding litigation in Tanzania and in many other countries where lawyers bear similar responsibility in determining patterns of litigation. Here, I argue that three factors—legal education, laws and institutions, and judicial receptivity—dissuade lawyers from making rights-based arguments in cases where they might be appropriate. Lawyers’ avoidance of rights-based arguments in turn leads to low levels of rights litigation in Tanzania.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 857 - 884
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Bar Foundation

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Footnotes

The author thanks Diana Kapiszewski, Ken Opalo, Lahra Smith, Samuel Solomon, Whitney Taylor, and four anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this work. Field research for this article was made possible by the generous support of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and the Center for Research and Fellowships at Georgetown University. The research was approved by the Georgetown University Institutional Review Board Protocol no. 2017-0618

References

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