Law Commons^™

Ethical Problems In Tax Practice, L. Paige Marvel, Paula M. Junghans

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

The Morality Of Intimate Faculty-Student Relationships, Nicholas Dixon

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented September 19, 1996 for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society

Lawyer Creeds And Moral Seismography, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Former-Client Conflicts, Charles W. Wolfram

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Privacy And Information Technology, Judith Wagner Decew

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented March 17, 1997 for the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society

The Laws Of Genetics, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

It used to be that high technology meant nuclear physics and missile systems, and presented the threat of physical destruction. Today, "high tech" means biotechnology and electronic communication systems, and the focus has shifted to concerns about more subtle problems like loss of privacy, inability to control personal information, and the discriminations and other adversities that often follow.

Cries And Whispers: Environmental Hazards, Model Rule 1.6, And The Attorney's Conflicting Duties To Clients And Others, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Government Lawyers And Their Private “Clients” Under The Fair Housing Act, Eugene R. Gaetke, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In strengthening enforcement of the federal Fair Housing Act, Congress in the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act ("FHAA") authorized government lawyers from the Justice Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and state and local civil rights agencies to prosecute cases "on behalf of” persons aggrieved by housing discrimination. This new enforcement scheme has led to a heightened level of administrative complaints and litigated cases in which government lawyers are put in the potentially difficult position of having to represent both their agency and private complainants.

The "triangular" relationships created by the FHAA between government lawyers and their public …

From "Moral Stupidity" To Professional Responsibility, Thomas D. Eisele

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Within the context-even, the challenge-presented by the first chapter of Seymour Wishman's book, Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, we symposiasts have been invited to say something about the teaching of courses which in law school go under the titles, "Legal Ethics," "Professional Ethics," or "Professional Responsibility." This last is the
title of a two-credit course that I teach, in what I take to be a fairly traditional form, over the span of a semester at the University of Cincinnati. In this essay, I want to talk about the teaching of such a course; not about how I manage to teach …

Judicial Interference With Effective Advocacy By The Defense, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A fundamental premise of the American criminal justice system is defense counsel's zealous professional advocacy. Representation of a criminal defendant to be effective must be vigorous. In administering a trial, judges have a duty to ensure a fair and orderly proceeding. On occasion, however, judges overstep the line and impede defense counsel's advocacy functions unfairly. This article describes some of the ways that trial judges may violate legal and ethical standards by improperly interfering with defense counsel's courtroom functions.

A Post-Conference Reflection On Separate Ethical Aspirations For Adr's Not-So-Separate Practitioners, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

At "The Lawyer's Duties and Responsibilities in Dispute Resolution" Symposium at South Texas College of Law, Oct. 25, 1996, a central topic of discussion was ADR's ethical separateness. There was a shared sense that ADR providers and practitioners confront a range of ethical issues that differ from those that confront non-ADR lawyers. On this view, because rules of professional responsibility are geared toward more adversarial forms of legal practice, they at best provide no answers and may provide wrong answers to ethical questions that arise in ADR. One solution would be to create new, separate, "role-specific" ethics rules for ADR …

Fiduciary Duty, Contract, And Waiver In Partnerships And Limited Liability Companies, Richard A. Booth Marbury Research Professor Of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Among the controversies swirling around the promulgations of new uniform statutes governing partnerships and LLCs is the question whether and to what extend fiduciary duties should be made mandatory or waivable. Although courts and commentators have not traditionally focused on the costs of fiduciary duties, the costs are significant in that such duties may preclude agents from engaging in other legitimate ventures. Indeed, fiduciary duty may be used by those to whom it is owed to prevent competition or extort side benefits form participants. Mandatory duties effectively require participants who may identify multiple business opportunities to overinvest their human capital …

Legal Ethics & Practical Politics: Musings On The Public Perception Of Lawyer Discipline, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cries And Whispers: Environmental Hazards, Model Rule 1.6, And The Attorney's Conflicting Duties To Clients And Others, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Law Review Articles

This article assesses the operation of Model Rule 1.6 in light of environmental catastrophes and concludes that the realities of environmental dangers demand reassessment of the ABA rule on confidentiality.

Part II recounts the history and purpose of the duty of confidentiality. Part III examines the text, commentary, and legislative history of Model Rule 1.6. Part IV discusses modifications to Rule 1.6 by states that have adopted the Model Rules. Part V examines two predominant views of the attorney (as champion and as officer of the court) as they relate to the issue of confidentiality. Part VI assesses Rule 1.6 …

A Letter From Appalachia, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

The author describes a sabbatical spent working with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky and volunteering as an adult literacy tutor. She describes the difficulties that face many people in that area who are in need of legal action and representation, and notes the importance of funding for legal aid for the poor.

Non-Silences Of Professor Hazard On "The Silences Of The Restatement": A Response To Professor Menkel-Meadow, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Poor Image Of The Profession And The Ethical Pressures On The Modern Lawyer, Rodney A. Smolla

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Theory And Experience In Constructing The Realitonship Between Lawyer And Client: Representing Women Who Have Been Abused, Ann Shalleck

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Lawyers, Clients, And Mediation , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

That the growth of mediation practice is changing the practice of law is obvious. The inability of many lawyers to understand the conceptual differences between adversarial lawyering and mediation practice strongly suggests the need to develop a theory of "good" representational mediation practice that takes into account competing client interests. On the one hand, lawyers must encourage client voice and participation. At the same time, however, the demands of professionalism require that lawyers guide their clients toward responsible decisionmaking. Representational lawyering in mediation may involve a number of distinct and traditional lawyering functions-- client counseling, negotiation, evaluation and advocacy. In …

Role Of Personal Values In Professional Decisionmaking, The , Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

The 1908 Canons of Professional Ethics directed a lawyer to "obey his own conscience."' Lawyers receive similar advice today. Writings on legal practice encourage lawyers to make professional decisions based on their moral values and religious beliefs, as expressed in the familiar injunction: to be charted by one's own "moral compass." Underlying this advice is an assumption about the professional norms - namely, that they accommodate, if not contemplate, lawyers' reliance on personal values. This assumption finds some support in the contemporary codes of lawyer conduct, which acknowledge a role for the lawyer's "conscience" or "moral judgment." Yet, it is …

Attorney-Client Privilege, Ethical Rules, And The Impaired Criminal Defendant, The , James A. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

Attorneys who represent possibly incompetent defendants charged with criminal conduct face difficult ethical issues, implicating professional duties of loyalty, zealous representation, and confidentiality-as an ethical question and as a matter of the law of evidence. The principles of agency underlying the attorney-client relationship are also implicated when the defendant's capacity is in doubt. In the ordinary criminal case, the client has at least implicitly authorized his lawyer's conduct. But if the defendant is impaired, the client may not have the mental capacity to authorize the attorney's actions. Defense counsel representing the possibly incompetent criminal defendant will often be the only …

On Living One Way In Town And Another Way At Home, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The title of this Lecture is from Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The occasion for the proposition is when the smalltown southern gentleman-lawyer Atticus Finch is given an opportunity to lie to protect his son from harm. He refuses. He says that the most important thing he has for his son is not protection but integrity. He says, "I can't live one way in town and another way in my home. "

The separation of town from home is an old one in the history of lawyers in America. When you trace the nineteenth-century development of legal ethics, …

Genetics, Genetic Testing, And The Specter Of Discrimination: A Discussion Using Hypothetical Cases, Richard H. Underwood, Ronald C. Cadle

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A "genetic revolution" is upon us. Techniques for genetic testing have increased in sophistication, and an international effort to map and sequence human DNA—The Human Genome Project ("HGP")—is now well under way. We are beginning to exploit our new found genetic knowledge. Recognition of the relationship between developments in genetic science, law, and public policy, is creeping into the "literature" and into the law school curriculum. Even the popular 60 Minutes television "news magazine" recently did a program on the perils of genetic testing. Still, for lawyers and policymakers at least, the material is not all that accessible.

The following …

Ethics, Professionalism, And Meaningful Work, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Much of the anxiety and dissatisfaction associated with legal ethics arises from the categorical quality of the bar's dominant norms. These norms take the form of relatively inflexible rules insensitive to all but a few of the circumstances of the cases they govern. Hence they often require the lawyer to take actions that contribute to injustice or to refrain from actions that would avert injustice.

For example, many lawyers believe that a criminal defender is obliged to impeach a truthful complaining witness even though the only immediate purpose of this tactic is to encourage the trier to draw a mistaken …

Is This Appropriate?, Thomas L. Shaffer, Julia B. Meister

Journal Articles

The word "appropriate" is so wildly overused in American culture that, as with other vacuous words and phrases, a person learns to read right through it. "Appropriate" is verbal tofu. This Essay pauses instead of reading through, particularly to notice the instances in which "appropriate" and its negative counterpart are used to give the appearance of a moral or legal judgment.

"Appropriate," chosen to express a legal judgment, is not only vacuous; it is also irresponsible. It catches the legislator, judge, or administrator in the act of passing the buck, as the President did when he ordered the Justice Department …

Introduction: What Will We Do When Adjudication Ends? A Brief Intellectual History Of Adr, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I begin by thanking the UCLA Law Review, and particularly Darrin Mollet and Bryce Johnson, for seeing the timeliness of the topic of alternative dispute resolution and organizing this Symposium-collecting some of the best thinkers, writers, and practitioners in the field to discuss, among other things, the economics of ADR, the role of lawyers, courts, and judges in ADR, and the application of ADR to a variety of substantive legal and regulatory problems. In this Introduction, I would like to introduce the topics and the authors, and put them in the larger context of the movement that is now called …

Ethics In Adr Representation: A Roadmap Of Critical Issues, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much ink has been spilled in recent years on the ethics and standards that should be applied to third party neutrals acting as mediators, arbitrators or evaluators in a variety of "alternative" (or as we now say, "appropriate") dispute resolution fora. Much less ink has been spilled on what could be an even more difficult issue: Should different ethical standards be applied to lawyers who serve as "representatives" inside ADR processes than the usual rules applied to lawyers in their roles as "advocates" or "counselors" in the more traditional adversary system?

Ethics In Alternative Dispute Resolution: New Issues, No Answers From The Adversary Conception Of Lawyers’ Responsibilities, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The romantic days of ADR appear to be over. To the extent that proponents of ADR, like myself, were attracted to it because of its promise of flexibility, adaptability, and creativity, we now see the need for ethics, standards of practice and rules as potentially limiting and containing the promise of alternatives to rigid adversarial modes of dispute resolution. It is almost as if we thought that anyone who would engage in ADR must of necessity be a moral, good, creative, and, of course, ethical person. That we are here today is deeply ironic and yet, also necessary, as "appropriate" …

Turning The Microscope On Ourselves: Self-Assessment By Bankruptcy Lawyers Of Potential Conflicts Of Interest In Columbus, Ohio, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article attempts to devise an appropriate instrument to determine whether bankruptcy lawyers in Columbus, Ohio are able to identify potential conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases. Although the article is unable to develop an appropriate instrument, it does discuss why the survey method is not appropriate for this type of study.