Jurisprudence Commons^™

Not So Cold An Eye: Richard Posner's Pragmatism, Jason S. Johnston

Vanderbilt Law Review

Over the past twenty odd years, Judge Richard Posner has established himself as one of the most creative and influential thinkers in the history of American law. His work divides into two parts: the prejudicial corpus, which is devoted almost entirely to the comprehensive economic analysis of law,' and the postjudicial corpus, which treats issues involving what may be called the theory of judging and courts--that is, the normative theory of how judges should decide cases and how courts should be organized. This division is rough and wavering, for Posner's work prior to his appointment to the federal bench often …

Structuring The Ethics Of Prosecutorial Trial Practice: Can Prosecutors Do Justice?, Fred C. Zacharias

Vanderbilt Law Review

Codes of professional responsibility take a very different approach to civil and criminal trials. In civil litigation, the codes presume that good outcomes result when lawyers represent clients aggressively. In criminal cases, the codes do not rely as fully on competitive lawyering. They treat prosecutors as advocates, but also as "ministers" having an ethical duty to "do justice."

Although the special prosecutorial duty is worded so vaguely that it obviously requires further explanation, the codes provide remarkably little guidance on its meaning. In effect, code drafters have delegated to prosecutors the task of resolving the special ethical issues prosecutors face …