6 - Of Windmills and Wetlands: The Press and the Romance of Property Rights

Summary

Introduction

I began this research when I was asked to consider whether I could think of any place in popular culture in which conservative cause lawyers – or more specifically, the property rights lawyers I have been studying for the last several years – have a life. Where were they represented? How were they represented?

After much thinking and rereading the press narratives that I describe here, I began to discern a very important pattern in the stories of cases about property rights: they tend to discuss the lawyers very little and instead focus much of the attention on their clients. Most of the time, the lawyers come into the narratives only to bring necessary legal information or to clarify a point made by their clients. They are, in a sense, a form of citation to the law. The absence of lawyers in some places and their presence as citation in others are not surprising as the plaintiffs in these cases quite often have very compelling stories to tell. With clients such as these, the lawyers can stand back and let the story of the case persuade their audience while bringing in legal matters when they want to validate something their client has said about rights and law, or to provide additional information about past precedents and the arguments they will make in the courtroom.