I observed a similar but slightly different situation in Korean society. Korea had claimed itself a homogeneous country where students are taught to be proud of the country’s “one-blood, one nation” mentality. This alleged mentality has been shaken for the past decade as the number of marriages between Koreans and non-Koreans has skyrocketed, especially in rural regions where young Korean women turned their backs away from Korean men. Naturally, the human rights issue of foreign spouses and their biracial children had been raised by civic groups. Widely discussed bills to abolish discrimination against biracial people, however, had been halted after the media frenzy over the issue settled down. Even if the bill had been submitted and approved, it would not have made a dramatic difference in their lives right away, as we witnessed in the history of racial struggles in American Society.
Despite the limitations, it would be unwise to ignore the impact of law in the lives of real people. Recently the Afghanistan parliament passed a law which prevented Shia Muslim women from declining their husband's request for sexual intercourse and essentially legalized marital rape. The bill was met by fierce protest by members of Afghanistan’s parliament, human rights activists, Western leaders including President Obama, and over 1,000 protestors who took to the street. This resulted in the Afghanistan President’s promising to change the law. Certainly, law is a powerful tool in regulating people’s liberties and rights. In order to protect the rights, however, we should be more creative in using our expertise in law as future lawyers.
The role of Lawyers
We first need to understand the mechanism of how the law is enacted and how it is exercised by the court and the government. Multiple private interest groups and political actors engage in the process of legislation by Congress and the adjudication by the courts to protect their vested interests. The political beliefs of the Supreme Court judges played a significant role in criminalizing sodomy and later overruling the decision. Journalists, lobbyists, and social activists all strive to bring about change or maintain the status quo by using words, actions, and money. Understanding the intricate mechanism of the legal system would be the first step to come up with a comprehensive strategy for bringing about social changes.
In addition, we need to adopt creative and flexible approaches in interpreting and practicing laws. The landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) was not simply achieved by the 14th Amendment alone. Although NAACP’s use of social science data as evidence to show the evils of “separate but equal” education might not have been a critical reason for the victory, it certainly widened the boundary for evidences accepted by the court in order to validate violations of equal protection. In addition, it opened opportunities for lawyers in collaborating with other academics and activists. By comparing and contrasting diverse approaches to represent people in need or under discrimination, we will be able to find a powerful combination of diverse mediums of social action to produce long-term social impact.
Conclusion
Growing up in a country with the history of rapid industrialization under an authoritarian government, I tended to think that law was governmental control. I thought that when the government needs to make a change, it will enact or revise a law and the problem will be fixed. However, through the aforementioned experiences, I came to realize the need to accept a broader understanding of lawyering. In particular, as we discussed in Wiki about “making social changes with words,” lawyers and journalists share the common goal of contributing to changes with words. The difference between a lawyer and a journalist is that the former has the knowledge and license to interpret and apply the intricacies of law, which is an indispensable instrument for efficient social change.
Law and Social Change in a Diverse Society
-- By SoeJungKim - 27 Feb 2009 |