| Since the1990s, the social contradictions caused by the transformation of socialpluralism interests, needs and social responsibility of the lawyers in the proceedingswere paid more attention. With transitions of functional differentiation of governmentand the market, the lawyer professional groups structure have also undergone a tinychange: the division of lawyers labor in the service methods, the service objects andthe service targets was more detailed, the cooperation in government, market, socialthree dimensions was closer. Government established legal-aid system, whosefunction was played by legal-aid lawyers to ensure the poor engaged in lawsuits; thepart of social lawyers tired of the rules about the customers first in the competitivemarket, retraded on public interest legal services to pursue peace and happiness;another part of social lawyers with loyal to the ideals of the spirit of the law, wascommitted to using the legal tools to promote democracy and the rule of law andcivilized ideal social construct. The lawyers pursued of most people of the legal idealof justice, focused more on the proceedings of the legal market exclusion ofvulnerable groups, as well as affecting the public interest or promoting the legalprogress, who gradually condensated together a number of lawyers emphasized oncareer aspirations, and formed a sub-group known as the "public interest lawyers".Groups of public interest lawyers in china have several distinct characteristics:firstly, multi-subject structure,secondly, complex formation mechanism, thirdly,thedifference of three interactive modes. China’s current public interest lawyers,dominated by the government legal-aid lawyers, commercial lawyers taken part-timein the public service, full-time public interest lawyers of the civil society, independentnon-governmental public interest litigants, the radical human rights lawyers, andexperts and scholars offered public interest legal and various types of subjects.China’s public interest lawyers groups was constructed through three paths: thetop-down systematic construction, private lawyers occasional market deviations,bottom-up spontaneous practice of civil society. In this process, public interest lawyers, legal-aid lawyers, human rights lawyers, public interest litigation lawyersand other symbols often appeared together, their social implications was parallelconstructed by the government, market and society. Legal-aid lawyers constructed bythe Government to protect the poor to afford lawyer fees, also play the potentialfunction in bearing the wake lawyers and social responsibility. the “public interestlitigation counsel” was constucted by market structure,who achieved overt functionsin loyal to the spirit of the law, and also promoted the potential of the system progress.The “public interest lawyers” and “human rights lawyers” was constructed by socialconstruction,accomplished the advocacy funciton that lawyers guaranteed lawsprotect the majority of people justice, but also achieved the potential function topromote the reconstruction of lawyers professional ethics. Different symbolsconstructed diverse public legal services space, in which open space, lawyersprovided the poor with legal-aid to support them, solved legal problems forvulnerable groups for low-paid or free, spared no effort to promote system progressby impacted litigation for all social members to share justice. In this public space, themultiple subjects of government, market and social participation, rationalcommunicated through the medium of the lawyers to resolve the contradictions andorder was restored to jointly construct the government, market and civil societyboundaries.In multiple subjects to participate in the public space of legal services, legal-aidlawyers occupied the mained status, commercial lawyers part-time participated in thepublic service in the market accounted dominant position, public interest lawyers incivil society was marginalized. Legal-aid lawyers had been confirmed by the nationalformal system, whose identification was established relatively easy, business lawyersin part-time participation in public-spirited, when they encountered the difficulties inthe civil society space they can also return to the market space. However, lawyers incivil society faced various communicated subjects of civil society space, nowhere toretreat while they suffered identificational conflicts so that they have to find in themedia and the public help in front of difficult. Crisis of legitimacy to the publicinterest lawyers caused a series of troubles: public interest lawyers were more willingto choose to provide the business service to support public interest service cost, the civil public interest legal organization faced more difficulties in mobilizing socialresources, levying funds, recuiting personnel and management, and sometimesperformed unstable "communication disorder"when they interacted with thegovernment.The subjects of this research was public interest lawyer groups, specificly,theformation mechanism of the public interest lawyers group research to study itsinteraction within the three-dimensional space of government, market and socialintegration process. In this study, public legal services space, as one open space ofresolving social conflicts and concerning about social justice, one conprehensiveparticipated space by the different subjects of government, market and social space,one showed boundary space for the government, market and civil society.This study focused on three questions: Firstly, China’s main structure of the groupof public interest lawyers, according to the social function of the different focuses,combined our public legal service space of multiple subjects. Secondly, the threeconstruction path analysis of the public interest lawyers group by analysing thedevelopment trajectory of public interest lawyers in the government, market andsocial, combing the main process of constructing diverse public legal services.Thirdly, concluded the three interactive modes“control-Independent-Cooperation”,“exclusion-Participate-cooperation”,“close-Conflict–Cooperation” byobserving the social interaction of public interest lawyers in the government,marketand social community to explore the public legal service principals in thegovernment,market and civil society space.In this study, the social space theory and the analysis of civil society theory wasused, analysis of public interest lawyers group formation mechanism, addedexperiences and materials for rational social perception about public interest lawyers,contributed to promote the role and function perception of public interest lawyers inresolving social conflicts and building social harmony,helped to enhance theconsensus of the lawyers professional groups, promoted the reconstruction of thelawyer professional values and the adjustment of the occupational structure. Thisstudy also enriched the reserch perspective of legal professional groups, increased theexperience sample of the legal sociology to fill the research vacancy of the public interest lawyers group.I also look forward to sociological empirical research canprovide theoretical response to the dilemma of public interest lawyers group. |
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