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ADVOCATES IN THE CRITICAL EYES OF SOCIETY

Stachova, N.

Abstract

The origins of the history of advocacy in the particular countries of Europe may be put together based on all kinds of sources. Aside from the normative texts which, the closer we get to the modern era, the more often represent a required regulation in society which controls the access to providing advocacy services, numerous references about advocates may be found in literature. The laws, which were often very concise, may be, in many cases, confronted with the reports which reflect the social seriousness of the profession of advocates and which react to the real circumstances in the respective environment in which the advocates were associated and which openly criticize their work before the courts, representing the clients and in the public life in general. What were the roots of such a criticism of the profession of advocates and what was its real value? What function did the criticism play with respect to the advocates and to society from which it arose? The objective of our contribution is first to map the critical remarks against the advocates in the Czech lands. Next, we will try to analyze the extant sources and use them as a foundation for introducing two possible approaches to the criticism of the advocates in the Medieval period and the early modern era. The first approach understands the criticism as a reflection of the true reality of the profession of advocates. To this effect, society attacks the moral peccadillos of the advocates by means of literature and forces them to look at themselves in the critical mirror by means of which it forces the advocates from the outside to advance in the required direction. Therefore it may be understood as societyВґs checking on the advocates, and making sure that the normative and ethical rules that the advocates fail to observe are not only reminded via such criticism, but are also exceeded by a call that the then actual inauspicious state was improved. The other possible view looks on the criticism as something spurious and illegitimate. All those who stubbornly criticize the advocates may also be partially blamed for their bad behavior. In this case, society is in a position of a client who first bribes its advocate so that it could later criticize him. Do the advocates unintentionally become scapegoats that are criticized by society for such attributes that society itself has or do they really deserve such a harsh criticism?

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B21/S5.066

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