Government ‘law-jobs’ and the use of government lawyers: a case of transplanting the foreign model of the legal profession to the Asia-Pacific region

Abstract

ABSTRACTTransplanting foreign legal institutions to domestic society invariably involves changing people’s social roles and actions, which is outside the traditional ‘legal’ province. In this article, I focus on a proposed law reform recommending the transplantation of the institution of American-style government lawyers to Taiwan, which highlights the contrasting characteristics underlying the legal professions of these two societies. The comparative study utilises Karl Llewellyn’s scheme of ‘law-jobs’ and ‘law-ways’ to illustrate how ‘government law-jobs’ in administrative processes and the roles of government lawyers can mirror the contrasting characteristics of the legal professions. First, the study reveals that the sharp division between bureaucracy and the legal profession in Taiwan results in the legal profession being less inclusive and integrated than that in the United States. Second, I argue that the contrasting characteristics of the legal professions imply crucial differences in the structural position of lawyers between these societies. In the tradition inspired by De Tocqueville’s observation of lawyers in American society, I derive a theoretical explanation to account for the contrast in characteristics, which I believe demonstrates two types of power relation regarding state, society and the legal profession concisely. Finally, I gauge what the legal profession and bureaucracy in Taiwan may need to accommodate for the institution of government lawyers to take root.