The birth of the media lawyer in the United States
Through the journey of the flamboyant and progressive lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), famous for having pleaded in 1925 during the "monkey trial" (Dayton, Tennessee), Florent Bonaventure paints a portrait of a profession whose image is transformed in the aftermath of the Great War. It also offers, through the prism of the trial lawyer and the birth of "spectacle trials", an analysis of America in the Roaring Twenties, marked by the rise of a popular and national press and the fascination of the news item.
2Lawyers are a unique profession in the United States, which is respected, envied and jealous at the same time. Since colonial times, they have represented a veritable American aristocracy [1]
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As Alexis de Tocqueville remarked in 1836: “If we… and find themselves at the heart of public life: a good number of judges, prosecutors, politicians and senior officials come from the ranks of the most prestigious law schools of East cost. This is because, in a country where the law irrigates social and commercial relations and enacts respect for fundamental freedoms, lawyers are king. They are the linchpins of a judicial system based on the accusatory procedure and the confrontation of truths, that of the accusation against that of the defense. Despite their centrality, very few books have looked at the history of this profession or analyzed its developments, except from a strictly legal perspective [2]
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There is no actual history of the profession…. The lawyer's place [3]
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The term lawyer has various meanings ... within the surrounding society has only been studied at the margins.
3However, the rise of some lawyers to celebrity status [4]
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Cliff Hocker, “Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Celebrity Lawyer”,… (F. Lee Bailey [5]
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F. Lee Bailey (1933-), successful lawyer, notably participated in ..., Alan Dershowitz, Johnnie Cochran) known to a large part of the population, as well as the media coverage of some of their feats of arms (the trial OJ Simpson, whose verdict broadcast on television, has been watched by nearly 150 million people, more than half of the American population) reveal as much about the evolution of the profession as about the growing role played by media and a certain "celebrity culture [6]
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Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of… ”at the very heart of American procedural law. Some lawyers act as consultants to televisions, others act as commentators, and still others act as presenters of talk shows, such as the "Johnnie Cochran Tonight" broadcast on the cable channel Court TV (1998-1999) . These lawyers know how to use the media to make themselves heard, to win their cases and to disseminate their ideas. They transform their pleadings into a spectacle [7]
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Following a long tradition of seeing Roscoe Pound, Criminal…, seek to seduce the jury and public opinion, and use and sometimes manipulate journalists eager for sensationalism. In the television age, they have come to understand that jurors shape public opinion in general, and that of jurors in particular, even though jurors are not supposed to read any information that could influence their judgment.
4In return, they are often reduced by the media to a stereotype, that of the boastful and unscrupulous lawyer, both cunning and flamboyant, greedy for gain and defender of the weakest; reductive vision if any in relation to the real work of lawyers and their firms [8]
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Marvin W. Mindes and Alan C. Acock, “Trickster, Hero, Helper:…. The media help to diffuse a certain image of the judicial system by reducing it to a Manichean fight between good and evil, led by easily recognizable personalities. The media lawyer is ultimately the idea of the public forging jurists, their talents and their functions.
5The transformation of lawyers into celebrities predates the emergence of television and dates back to those Roaring Twenties that marked the entry of the United States into "the era of mass communication. [9]
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André Kaspi, The United States in a time of prosperity… ”. Certain lawyers, like Earl Rogers, Arthur Garfield Hays and especially Clarence Darrow knew how to invest the media field and to use this space to spread their ideas and diffuse their ideals. With the mass media, causes lawyers are born, those committed lawyers who make law an instrument of social change [10]
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Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold (eds.), Cause Lawyering:…. They do not use their profession as a simple springboard to access positions
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