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The Short History Of Arizona Legal Ethics, Keith Swisher
The Short History Of Arizona Legal Ethics, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
This Essay provides a history of Arizona legal ethics: its substance and procedure. A hundred years ago, legal ethics barely existed in Arizona. Fortunately, a century permits significant progress, as captured in this work. Following the lead of the ABA (among others), Arizona slowly but surely adopted a modernized system of ethical regulation. And today, Arizona shows increasing signs of autonomy in legal ethics. These signs can be seen in Arizona’s independent approach to lawyer screening, prosecutorial ethics, and inadvertent disclosure — to focus on just a few of many examples in this “short history.” In Part I of this …
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Recusal, Government Ethics, And Superannuated Constitutional Theory, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Something good and something bad happened recently in government and judicial ethics; no one has truly noticed yet for some reason. The Supreme Court all but banned First Amendment analysis as applied to recusal laws, both legislative and judicial. That, actually, is the good thing, or so I argue. The bad thing is that the Court, in doing so, used a geriatric approach to constitutional theory. The approach is unduly reverent of anything “old;” and old is not limited to the practices of the Founding Fathers, but also includes “traditional” practices within some undefined range. But what is old is …
Legal Ethics And Campaign Contributions: The Professional Responsibility To Pay For Justice, Keith Swisher
Legal Ethics And Campaign Contributions: The Professional Responsibility To Pay For Justice, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Lawyers as johns, and judges as prostitutes? Across the United States, attorneys (“johns,” as the analogy goes) are giving campaign money to judges (“prostitutes”) and then asking those judges for legal favors in the form of rulings for themselves and their clients. Despite its pervasiveness, this practice has been rarely mentioned, much less theorized, from the attorneys’ ethical point of view. With the surge of money into judicial elections (e.g., Citizens United v. FEC), and the Supreme Court’s renewed interest in protecting justice from the corrupting effects of campaign money (e.g., Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.), these conflicting currents …
The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher
The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Judges in the United States regularly (and often harshly) are disciplined for “bad” criminal law decisions. On a number of levels, it is baffling that this ethical “Rule” — punishing judges for errors of adjudication — has never been the subject of in-depth critical analysis. Thus, this Article is surprisingly the first scholarly work fully deconstructing the Rule (along with attendant considerations in criminal law adjudication) and addressing directly many of the tough questions that have been avoided or mistreated. This Article begins by examining an unexamined, “yet earthshaking” movement—that is, the modern invention of using judicial conduct commissions (“judge …