William B. Rubenstein

Divided We Litigate: Addressing Disputes among Group Members and Lawyers in Civil Rights Campaigns

Groups are messy. They are, by definition, comprised of many individuals and thus encompass a range of desires and agendas. Any group must generate ways to reach decisions among these competing possibilities. Typically, groups develop formal and informal mechanisms to define their goals and strategies. Consider a law school faculty. The faculty is an identifiable group of individuals that has a set of formal decisionmaking processes for the various types of choices it must make. A faculty votes on whom to admit to the school, what courses will be offered, who will teach these courses, and upon whom degrees will be conferred. Most faculties accomplish these decisions by some form of democratic process (majority or supermajority votes following participatory, dialogic meetings) or by some form of expertise (delegation to committees that study issues in depth and provide recommendations to, or simply make decisions for, the group). It would be rare to find a faculty