Networks and Norms: Social Justice Lawyering and Social Capital in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Despite the recent prominence of social capital theory, few scholars have addressed how social capital concepts might impact social justice advocacy. We argue that a client-centered social capital model, emphasizing networks and norms that affect our clients, provides a framework for social justice lawyers to address clients' needs. We show how networks and norms map onto a debate over two strategies for social justice lawyering, namely community lawyering and impact litigation. Social capital analysis helps predict which of these strategies might be more effective in a given situation. Further, we show how a client-centered social capital framework can illuminate some internal disagreements between social justice lawyers. Some internal disagreements within the social justice community can be better understood as debates over the relative value of bonding social capital versus bridging social capital, where bonding capital exists between members of a self-identified group, and bridging capital exists between members of different groups. At several points we draw examples from the Post-Katrina New Orleans Social Justice Docket, an attempt to comprehensively catalog the major social justice-related litigation and advocacy efforts in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck the region in 2005.