The inoperative community of law students: rethinking the foundations of legal culture

Abstract

In this article I contemplate the possibility of a relationship between democracy and the democracy to come experienced from within an inoperative community of law students. The reason for this contemplation is to ascertain to what extent law students can contribute to transformation or transformative constitutionalism as referred to by Karl Klare and Dennis Davis in their 2010 work. I investigate the radical and transcendental nature of human rights and democracy and their relationship with legal culture as a community of lawyers which also confirms the status quo and denies the radical nature of human rights and democracy. I argue that law students as an inoperative community can create human rights and democracy discourse which can promote transformation.