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Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Series

2018

First Amendment

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

(At Least) Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Election Lies, Helen Norton Jan 2018

(At Least) Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Election Lies, Helen Norton

Publications

Lies take many forms. Because lies vary so greatly in their motivations and consequences (among many other qualities), philosophers have long sought to catalog them to help make sense of their diversity and complexity. Legal scholars too have classified lies in various ways to explain why we punish some and protect others. This symposium essay offers yet another taxonomy of lies, focusing specifically on election lies — that is, lies told during or about elections. We can divide and describe election lies in a wide variety of ways: by speaker, by motive, by subject matter, by audience, by means of …


When Should The First Amendment Protect Judges From Their Unethical Speech?, Lynne H. Rambo Jan 2018

When Should The First Amendment Protect Judges From Their Unethical Speech?, Lynne H. Rambo

Faculty Scholarship

Judges harm the judicial institution when they engage in inflammatory or overtly political extrajudicial speech. The judiciary can be effective only when it has the trust of the citizenry, and judicial statements of that sort render it impossible for citizens to see judges as neutral and contemplative arbiters. This lack of confidence would seem especially dangerous in times like these, when the citizenry is as polarized as it has ever been.

Ethical codes across the country (based on the Model Code of Judicial Conduct) prohibit judges from making these partisan, prejudicial or otherwise improper remarks. Any discipline can be undone, …