Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Lawyers As Quasi-Public Actors, W. Bradley Wendel
Lawyers As Quasi-Public Actors, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This paper was written for a panel on access to justice at the 100th anniversary conference of the Law Society of Alberta, Canada. In it I argue that the debate over access to justice, which in the United States generally means pro bono representation provided by individual lawyers, cannot be divorced from broader theoretical debates about the lawyer's role. My claim is that lawyers are quasi-public actors, in the sense that they have some responsibility to aim directly at justice in their representation of clients, and cannot rely only on indirect strategies to ensure that justice is served. The argument …
Government Lawyers In The Liberal State, W. Bradley Wendel
Government Lawyers In The Liberal State, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
Criticism of the “politicization” of the role of federal government lawyers has been intense in recent years, with the scandals over the hiring practices at the Department of Justice, and the advice given to the administration by lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, concerning various aspects of the post-9/11 national security environment. Unfortunately, many of these critiques do not hold up very well under scrutiny. We lack a coherent account of what it means to “politicize” the practice of interpreting and applying the law. This paper argues that our evaluative discourse about the ethics of government lawyers is inadequately …