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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Wild Mid-West: Missouri Ethics And Campaign Finance Under A Narrowed Corruption Regime, Dan Schnurbusch Nov 2015

The Wild Mid-West: Missouri Ethics And Campaign Finance Under A Narrowed Corruption Regime, Dan Schnurbusch

Missouri Law Review

This Note explores some of the history of Missouri’s attempts at ethics reform, recent developments in Missouri’s ethics legislation and federal First Amendment jurisprudence, and how these issues commingle to produce a dangerous climate in which to operate a representative democracy. This Note confronts some of the Supreme Court’s conclusions in both Citizens United and McCutcheon, exposes some of the deleterious societal and legal effects of these rulings, and provides some possible courses of action that Missouri and other states might undertake in order to help lay the groundwork for upholding meaningful campaign finance regulation in the future.


Defending The Guilty: Lawyer Ethics In The Movies, J. Thomas Sullivan Jun 2014

Defending The Guilty: Lawyer Ethics In The Movies, J. Thomas Sullivan

Missouri Law Review

For many, Attorney Atticus Finch’s (Gregory Peck) representation of an innocent African-American accused of rape by a Southern white woman in Depression-era Alabama by the town’s most imposing citizen, in To Kill a Mockingbird, represents the consummate portrayal of the lawyer’s discharge of his ethical duty to his client. Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) is falsely accused of rape by Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox), the daughter of a lower-class, white bigot, Bob Ewell (James Anderson), who caught her at tempting to physically seduce Robinson, an African-American. The Ewells, clearly influenced by the father’s racial hatred, address Mayella’s unacceptable sexual appetite …


Corporate Gatekeeper In Ethical Perspective, The , Christopher T. Hines Jan 2013

Corporate Gatekeeper In Ethical Perspective, The , Christopher T. Hines

Missouri Law Review

The fallout from the financial crisis continues to inform the development of corporate and securities law, and the new regulatory landscape for economic activity within the United States is beginning to take form. This evolutionary process, however, has been anything but stable or certain. As might be expected, in concert with such momentous change in law and policy, recriminations for and associated investigations of past activity continue to affect competent regulators as well as market participants. Nevertheless, while many of the underlying causes of the financial crisis are now better understood by both policy makers and scholars, the question remains …


Collaborative Lawyers' Duties To Screen The Appropriateness Of Collaborative Law And Obtain Clients' Informed Consent To Use Collaborative Law, John M. Lande, Forrest Steven Mosten Jan 2010

Collaborative Lawyers' Duties To Screen The Appropriateness Of Collaborative Law And Obtain Clients' Informed Consent To Use Collaborative Law, John M. Lande, Forrest Steven Mosten

Faculty Publications

Collaborative Law (CL) is an innovative dispute resolution process that offers significant benefits but also poses significant non-obvious risks. This Article provides a systematic analysis of these possible risks as identified in books written by CL experts, CL practice group websites, social science research, and bar association ethics opinions. In CL, the lawyers and clients sign a "participation agreement" promising to use an interest-based approach to negotiation and fully disclose all relevant information. A key element of CL is the "disqualification agreement" signed by parties (and sometimes by attorneys) which provides that both CL lawyers would be disqualified from representing …


Non-Beneficial Pediatric Research And The Best Interest Standard: A Reconciliation, Paul J. Litton Jul 2008

Non-Beneficial Pediatric Research And The Best Interest Standard: A Reconciliation, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Federal efforts beginning in the 1990's have successfully increased pediatric research to improve medical care for all children. Since 1997, the FDA has requested 800 pediatric studies involving 45,000 children. Much of this research is "non-beneficial"; that is, it exposes pediatric subjects to risk even though these children will not benefit from participating in the research. Non-beneficial pediatric research (NBPR) seems, by definition, contrary to the best interests of pediatric subjects, which is why one state supreme court has essentially prohibited it. It also appears that the only plausible rationale for this research is utilitarian, as it risks some children …


Ethics Of Collaborative Law, The, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2008

Ethics Of Collaborative Law, The, Scott R. Peppet

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article argues that Collaborative Law can be permissible under the current rules of legal ethics. At the same time, it contends that this is not a foregone conclusion, and that certain Collaborative Law contracts or arrangements are more suspect than others. In short, it argues that collaborative lawyers need to be extremely careful in how they go about their practice if they wish to withstand ethical scrutiny.


When Lawyers Move Their Lips: Attorney Truthfulness In Mediation And A Modest Proposal, Don Peters Jan 2007

When Lawyers Move Their Lips: Attorney Truthfulness In Mediation And A Modest Proposal, Don Peters

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article examines whether the punch line that you can tell when lawyers are lying by confirming that their lips are moving applies to their conduct when negotiating in mediations. General surveys of lawyer honesty suggest that this perception probably does apply to the way lawyers negotiate in mediations. Only 20% of people surveyed in a 1993 American Bar Association poll described the legal profession as honest, and that number fell to 14% in a 1998 Gallup poll.' A more recent poll revealed that one-third of the American public believes that lawyers are less truthful than most people.


Rule Of Law(Yers), The, Robert F. Cochran Jr. Apr 2000

Rule Of Law(Yers), The, Robert F. Cochran Jr.

Missouri Law Review

In recent years, several lawyers and law professors have written books about the decline of ethical behavior in the legal profession.' They have found that lawyers are more adversarial, less civil, less honest, less concerned with justice, and less happy than in the past.2 Associates are less loyal to firms, and firms are less loyal to associates. 3 Many lawyers lament what the profession has become. They wonder whether they do a good thing. "Can I be a lawyer and a good person?" "Do lawyers add to the misery of the world?"


Corporations Practicing Law Through Lawyers: Why The Unauthorized Practice Of Law Doctrine Should Not Apply, Grace M. Giesel Jan 2000

Corporations Practicing Law Through Lawyers: Why The Unauthorized Practice Of Law Doctrine Should Not Apply, Grace M. Giesel

Missouri Law Review

Historically, a doctrine has existed within the area of unauthorized practice of law regulation which holds that a corporation or other entity cannot be licensed to practice law and thus cannot legally practice law. Even if the entity hires as an employee an attorney duly licensed to render the service, the doctrine forbids the attomey from representing any party other than the employer because if the attorney were to represent a third party, the entity, a nonlawyer, would be representing the third party, and this would violate the rule that corporations may not practice law.2 The primary motivating rationale of …


Sacrificial Attorney: Assignment Of Legal Malpractice Claims, The, John M. Limbaugh Jan 2000

Sacrificial Attorney: Assignment Of Legal Malpractice Claims, The, John M. Limbaugh

Missouri Law Review

The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District of Missouri ruled, in a case of first impression, that causes of action for legal malpractice are nonassignable. The court found that permitting assignments would be contrary to public policy because assignments would create a marketplace for legal malpractice claims, jeopardize the attorney's duties of loyalty and confidentiality to the client, and restrict access to competent legal services. This Note agrees with the court's result but will explore and challenge the public policy arguments against assignment of legal malpractice claims.


Harming Future Persons: Obligations To The Children Of Reproductive Technology, Philip G. Peters Jr. Apr 1999

Harming Future Persons: Obligations To The Children Of Reproductive Technology, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

Two paradigms dominate contemporary ethical and legal debate about the risks posed to children who owe their lives to reproductive technology. One asks whether the children have lives so tragic that life itself is harmful. The other approach asks whether children so conceived are likely to enjoy a minimally decent existence. Although the two approaches have quite different analytic foundations, they share one crucial trait. Each concludes that children who owe their lives to reproductive technology are harmed only when that technology causes genuinely catastrophic injuries.Because these conventional paradigms define harmful conduct exclusively by reference to the magnitude of the …


Role Of The Criminal Defense Lawyer In Representing The Mentally Impaired Defendant: Zealous Advocate Or Officer Of The Court, Rodney J. Uphoff Jan 1988

Role Of The Criminal Defense Lawyer In Representing The Mentally Impaired Defendant: Zealous Advocate Or Officer Of The Court, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

This article examines a difficult question in the representation of mentally impaired criminal defendants: should counsel be obligated to inform the court of doubts about a client's competency to stand trial even though doing so may be contrary to the client's wishes or best interests? Professor Rodney J. Uphoff analyzes authorities that impose such an obligation on defense lawyers, including an American Bar Association Criminal Justice Standard and a recent decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, State v. Johnson. Uphoff concludes that these authorities needlessly undercut the mentally impaired defendant's right to zealous representation. He proposes an alternative ethical model …