Umubyeyi, Liliane

Speaking in the Name of Apartheid’s Victims? The Challenges of Professionalized Representation in a Trial - 2015.


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Though recent scholarship in the sociology of law has shown that legal professionals involved in judicial mobilization initiated by social movements do not necessarily dominate the process, little remains known about the forms of resistance deployed by these movements’ leaders, to contain the legal professionals’ authority. This article aims to examine practices of resistance against the expertise of these professionals and to understand how they negotiate their scope for action as well as their power of representation. Drawing on the case of a trial launched by a South African NGO in collaboration with American and South African lawyers, this article shows how the leaders of an apartheid victims’ movement develop what might be understood as a counter-expertise enabling them to claim an exclusive sphere of authority.