In political litigation lawyers rather than clients control the case’s strategy and aims.

Evidence

The appropriate relationship between lawyer and client is particularly difficult to determine in political litigation, where the aim is not merely to vindicate the interests of a single person but also to establish a legal principle of benefit to a larger group. … As part of the campaign, they actively sought out clients willing to serve as vehicles for challenging discriminatory laws. In Brown, which represented the culmination of this struggle, the NAACP recruited Oliver Brown, whose daughter attended a segregated school in Topeka, Kansas, to serve as plaintiff. The decision to litigate, the selection of plaintiffs, the choice of when and where to sue, and the decision as to how to frame the legal issues all remained in the hands of Thurgood Marshall and his associates. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 757

Categorization

• XREF: Where litigation strategy is lawyer-driven, echoes the independence-accountability and interest-group themes from Chapters 3 and 15. — connects to: Unequal legal representation raises the risk of convicting the innocent. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 722; Lawyers act as client delegates or as trustees for assumed group goals — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 895; Lawyers pursue client aims either as delegates or as trustees with broader goals — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 608 (+2 more)
• SEED: Essays on grassroots lawyering today could use the Brown pattern as the archetype of cause-lawyering tradeoffs while pushing against its top-down frame.

Broader Connections

• Lawyers act as client delegates or as trustees for assumed group goals #expands (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 895