Offering a window into the history of the modern legal profession
in Western Europe, Stephen Jacobson presents a history of lawyers
in the most industrialized city on the Mediterranean. Far from
being mere curators of static law, Barcelona's lawyers were at the
center of social conflict and political and economic change,
mediating between state, family, and society.
Beginning with the resurrection of a decadent bar during the
Enlightenment, Jacobson traces the historical evolution of lawyers
throughout the long nineteenth century. Among the issues he
explores are the attributes of the modern legal profession, how
lawyers engaged with the Enlightenment, how they molded events in
the Age of Revolution and helped consolidate a liberal
constitutional order, why a liberal profession became conservative
and corporatist, and how lawyers promoted fin-de-siecle
nationalism.
From the vantage point of a city with a distinguished legal
tradition,
Catalonia's Advocates provides fresh insight into
European social and legal history; the origins of liberal
professionalism; education, training, and the practice of law in
the nineteenth century; the expansion of continental bureaucracies;
and the corporatist aspects of modern nationalism.