Van notabele naar expert. Over het veranderende juristenbeeld

Samenvatting

In this essay, Stephen Brints's In an Age of Experts, a sociological study on changing ideas concerning professionalism in the US, is discussed and assessed in relation to American discussions on changing attitudes in the American legal profession. The cultural ideals of trustee professionalism are losing ground vis-a-vis the idea that the status of a professional is legitimated solely by his or her formal expert knowledge. Thus, the so-called expert professional does not identify with ideals such as character, judgment, and responsibility for the public good, and this can be related to Anthony Kronmans's idea that lawyers identify less and less with the idea that their particular role in society prescribes them a specifically legal ethics. Drawing on an essay by Abram de Swaan on the scientific ideals informing Freud's idea of the psychoanalytic setting, the scientific ideals behind the new expert professionalism in legal practices are brought to the fore. The fundamental idea is that the ideal of expert professionalism can be related to the ideal of the "sociale nul-situatie," which amounts to a scientific ideal grafted onto the natural sciences. It is concluded that the idea of the lawyer as an expert professional, as an agent of formal knowledge comparable to the technical engineer, informs much of the current discussions on the institutional restructuring of the legal profession in the Netherlands. 9 References. Adapted from the source document.