Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-01T16:24:51.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Citizens and the Socialist State: The Negotiation of Legal Practice in Socialist Cuba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Raymond J. Michalowski
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1973 the Cuban government abolished the private practice of law, replacing it with a system of law collectives known as bufetes colectivos. These law collectives were designed to provide low-cost legal services to the public in ways consistent with the ideology of a nonadversarial relationship between lawyers and the state. I examine both the relationship between the ideological and legal bases for the socialist practice of law in Cuba and the actual practice of law in one bufete colectivo. Using a combination of documentary and ethnographic information to reconstruct the day-to-day practice of law in the bufete colectivo, I examine the ways Cuban attorneys I observed sought to serve their clients' interests and to pursue their own professional goals within an ideological framework that stressed a nonadversarial model of lawyering. I give particular attention to criminal defense which, more than civil cases, often required attorneys to balance their clients' interests against the socialist ideal of nonadversarial lawyering. These attorneys, as intermediaries between citizens and the state, often found ways to utilize the formal framework of substantive and procedural laws to represent clients' interests despite an official ideology that emphasized nonadversarial lawyering.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , 1995 , pp. 65 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by The Law and Society Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank Dr. Nancy Reichman, Dr. Niel Websdale, Dr. Nancy Wonders and Dr. Marjorie Zatz for helpful commentaries on earlier drafts.

References

References

Agar, Michael (1986) Speaking of Ethnography. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.10.4135/9781412985895CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azicri, Max (1980) “A Cuban Perspective on Socialist Legality,” 5 Rev. of Socialist Law No. 1, p. 203.Google Scholar
Azicri, Max (1987) “Crime, Penal Law, and the Cuban Revolutionary Process,” Crime & Social Justice No. 23, p. 51.Google Scholar
Berman, Harold (1964) Justice in the U.S.S.R.: An Introduction to Soviet Law. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Bogdan, Michael (1989) “Thirty Years of Cuban Revolutionary Law,” 15 Rev. of Socialist Law 319.Google Scholar
Brady, James (1981a) “The Transformation of Law under Socialism: The Contrasting Experiences of Cuba and China,” 10 Insurgent Sociologist, No. 4, pp. 5–24 (Summer-Fall).10.1177/089692058101000402CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, James (1981b) “Fresh Winds on Rotted Sails: Spanish Legal Reforms, American Parallels, and the Cuban Socialist Alternative: A Reply to Antonio Beristain,” 9 International J. of the Sociology of Law 177.Google Scholar
Cantor, Robert (1974) “New Laws for a New Society,” Crime & Social Justice, No. 2, pp. 12–23 (Fall-Winter).Google Scholar
Clifford, James & Marcus, George, eds. (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diego Cañizares, Fernando (1979) Teoría del Derecho. Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educatión.Google Scholar
Escalona Reguera, Juan (1985a) “Palabras de Apertura de la Asamblea,” Memorias de la Sesion Constitutiva de la Asamblea General. Havana: Organizatión Nacional de Bufetes Colectivos.Google Scholar
Evenson, Debra (1989) “The Changing Role of Law in Revolutionary Cuba.” Legal Studies Institute, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Evenson, Debra (1990) “The Changing Role of Law in Revolutionary Cuba,” in Halebsky, S. & Kirk, J., eds., Transformation and Struggle: Cuba Faces the 1990s. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretations of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Ginsburgs, George (1985) “The Soviet Judicial Elite: Is It?” 11 Rev. of Socialist Law 293.Google Scholar
Gomez Treto, Raúl (1989) “30 Years of Cuban Revolutionary Cuban Penal Law.” Presented at the 30 Years of Cuban Revolution Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia.Google Scholar
Hayden, Robert M. (1989) “Cultural Context and the Impact of Traffic Safety Legislation: The Reception of Mandatory Seatbelt Laws in Yugoslavia and Illinois,” 23 Law & Society Rev. 283.Google Scholar
Hazard, John N. (1969) Communists and Their Law. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Huskey, Eugene (1986) “The Politics of the Soviet Criminal Process: Expanding the Right to Counsel in Pre-Trial Proceedings,” 34 American J. of Comparative Law 93.Google Scholar
Huskey, Eugene (1990) “Between Citizen and State: The Soviet Bar (Advokatura) under Gorbachev,” 28 Columbia J. of Transnational Law 95.Google Scholar
Huskey, Eugene (1991) “A Framework for the Analysis of Soviet Law,” 50 Russian Rev. 53.Google Scholar
Jambrek, Peter (1985) “The Economic Base of Legality: The Case of Yugoslavia,” 13 International J. of the Sociology of Law 191.Google Scholar
Kidder, Robert L. (1983) Connecting Law and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir (1965) What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. Moscow: Progress Publishers.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C. B. (1967) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Maddex, , L., James Jr. (1974) Constitutional Law: Cases and Comments. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Maine, Henry (1888) Ancient Law. New York: Henry Holt & Co.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Markovitz, Inga (1982) “Law or Order—Constitutionalism and Legality in Eastern Europe,” 34 Stanford Law Rev. 513. —– (1989) “Law and Glasnost: Some Thoughts about the Future of Judicial Review under Socialism,” 23 Law & Society Rev. 399.Google Scholar
Michalowski, Raymond (1992) “Another Way to Skin the Cat: Depenalization and Criminal Code Reform in Cuba.” Presented to American Society of Criminology, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Rand, Robert (1991) Comrade Lawyer: Inside Soviet Justice in an Era of Reform. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Rodriguez, Antonio (1987) “El Sistema Juridico Penal y el Sistema Judicial Cubano,” Rev. Juridica, pp. 45–111 (July-Sept.).Google Scholar
Salas, Luis (1979) Social Control and Deviance in Cuba. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Salas, Luis (1983) “The Emergence and Decline of the Cuban Popular Tribunals,” 17 Law & Society Rev. 587.Google Scholar
Solomon, Peter (1987) “The Case of the Vanishing Acquittal: Informal Norms and the Practice of Soviet Criminal Justice,” 39 Soviet Studies 531.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Tigar, Michael, & Levy, Madeleine R. (1977) Law and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Vago, Steven (1991) Law and Society. 3d. ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Vega Vega, Juan (1981) “Comentarios a la Parte General Del Codigo Penal Cubano,” 17 Rev. Cubana de Derecho 109.Google Scholar
Van der Plas, Adèle (1987) Revolution and Criminal Justice: The Cuban Experiment, 1959–1983. Providence, RI: FORIS.Google Scholar
Zatz, Marjorie (1994) Producing Legality: Law and Socialism in Cuba. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zimbalist, Andrew (1990) “Does the Economy Work?” 24 NACLA: Report on the Americas No. 2, pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

Statutes, Codes, and Regulations

Code of Ethics (established by National Assembly of Bufetes Colectivos), 13 Dec. 1978.Google Scholar
Law of Judicial Organization, No. 1250 (1973).Google Scholar
Law of Judicial Organization, No. 4 (1973), approved 12 Aug. 1977).Google Scholar
Law of Criminal Procedure Law, No. 5 (1977).Google Scholar
Resolution No. 938, Ministry of Justice: Regulations Regarding Law Collectives (1978), approved 27 Dec.Google Scholar
Decree-Law No. 81: Concerning the Practice of Law and the National Organization of Bufete Colectivos (1984), approved 8 June.Google Scholar
Resolution No. 142, Ministry of Justice: Regulations Concerning the Practice of Law and the National Organization of Bufete Colectivos (1984), approved June.Google Scholar
Penal Code, No. 62 (1987).Google Scholar