Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

On Being Pleasant: Ethics In Estate Planning, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The play “Harvey” teaches a valuable lesson on legal ethics through the character Elwood. Elwood teaches how being pleasant does more for a person than being smart. Legal ethics in estate planning is examined through three points of view: the reality of professional life in estate planning, the reality of client life in estate planning, and the reality of life in families that are affected by estate planning. In discussing each point of view, the Author uses the actions of Elwood to demonstrate and argue that professional ethics is not just a system for staying out of trouble, but is …

The Gentleman In Professional Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The character of the “gentlemen” has served as a basis for ethics in professionalism. The purpose of this article is to describe the gentleman’s ethics, to explain its implications on the legal profession, to test its adequacy, and to argue that the gentleman’s ethic veered wrong by moving away from its religious tradition. In particular, the author analyzes its adequacy by engaging in four tests including (1) whether the gentleman’s ethic survives conceptions of class and professionalism; (2) whether it provides the skills needed for dealing with power and institutions; (3) whether it takes into account the “tragic nature of …

Preface, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Several years ago, when I lived in Indiana, I got a grant to write a book about lawyers. The newspaper ran a story about it; the paper said I was to study the morals of lawyers. A friend of mine sent me a clipping of the story with a note that said, "It won't take long." My friend held the common Hoosier view that lawyers have no morals. A frontier story tells of the Indiana lawyer who died and whose body was laid out in a room and left for the night. When morning came, there was nothing left in …

The Legal Ethics Of The Two Kingdoms, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The question I propose to address while I am with you is this: Is there a special morality for professional life? In terms of convention and argot, the answer to that question would appear to be: Yes, there is a separate morality for the professional lives of lawyers and judges. We do not follow the same morals in public and professional life as we follow in personal life.

The Legal Ethics Of Servanthood, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

I would like mainly to talk with you about, a consequential question, and that is whether the ethics of the New Testament are of any value in discussing professional morality. Such a question is probably f value to Jews and Christians; the New Testament is mostly about Jesus of Nazareth and (1) professionals to whom Jesus is of ultimate importance might claim to find value for their lives in his life. And (2) the God of Jesus is the God of Israel. The moral principles of Jesus are the moral principles of Israel. The question is of value, too, I …

David Hoffman's Law School Lectures, 1822-1833, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The Baltimore lawyer and teacher David Hoffman (1784-1854), the father of American legal ethics, was also the first of the systematic American legal educators. He held one of the first appointments in this country as a university law professor (at the University of Maryland, 1814-43) and wrote the first American outline of the study of law. Joseph Story, in a contemporary review of the 1817 Course, called Hoffman's work "an honour to our country[,] . . . by far the most perfect system for the study of the law that has ever been offered to the public. " Chancellor James …

Natural Law And The "Is"-"Ought" Question: An Invitation To Professor Veatch, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

This Article invites Professor Henry Veatch to consider some of Finnis' previous work. Finnis asserts that his work presents "serious questions" for those who interpret Aristotle and Acquinas in the way the Veatch does and invites Veatch to respond.

Christian Lawyer Stories And American Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My view of legal ethics rests on, or at least involves, a couple of biases. For one thing, I think of legal ethics as an ethical subject rather than as a legal subject. When it comes to "professional responsibility" I am more interested in morals than I am in law. In this (and in very little else), I am in agreement with Dean Monroe Freedman, who said, in a lecture dedicated to the memory of Pope John XXIII, that the question which interests him is whether a good person can be a lawyer. For Freedman, I think, and for me, …

Moral Theology In Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

I am talking at a Lutheran university and therefore should probably have some theses, some propositions that I could nail to the chapel door. But I'm afraid I have failed Martin Luther: I have only one thesis and it is not ready for a nail. It is still as much a question as a thesis. My question is whether there is any point in including moral theology in the study of legal ethics in the university. Let me be candid: I teach the typical required course in "professional responsibility," and I do a lot of writing on ethics, and I …

Henry Knox And The Moral Theology Of Law Firms, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

One of the reasons we modern American lawyers find the "golden age" of our 19th century forebears attractive is that it was morally unambiguous. It seems to have been an age of giants who were consistent. The "republican" lawyers who wrote our first statements on legal ethics were moral theologians as well as leaders—and they found no difficulty in being both. David Hoffman, who attracted as much applause from the conservative Calvinists at Princeton Theological Seminary as he attracted from the bench and bar, drew no distinction between the morals he practiced at home and the morals he practiced in …

The Moral Theology Of Atticus Finch, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Heroes are identified by the needs of those who choose them. In the case of Atticus Finch, heroism centered on his insistence in telling the truth. In this article, Thomas L. Shaffer explores the idea that this truth was (I) an expression of the person he was and of the community he sought for his children and neighbors; (II) an expression of the virtue of courage and also (and therefore) the expression of a theology; (III) a political act; and (IV) a professional act. As early as 1854, Judge Sharswood (chief justice, law dean and eminent lawyer) could draw a …

Serving The Guilty, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My purpose here is to ask whether there is a moral way for a lawyer to serve the guilty. I think this is an issue Mr. Rightor would have enjoyed. He was devoted to the instruction of future lawyers, particularly those who studied law at this law school and were enrolled in his classes in professional ethics. He was equally devoted, in the midst of a busy and successful law practice, to care and compassion for the occasional professional colleague who had, as Mr. McDonald said in his eulogy, "through ignorance or . . . financial plight . . . …

Christian Theories Of Professional Responsibility, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Consideration of the religious and moral significance of legal practice is a subject to which too little attention has been paid in American legal education. Louis M. Brown has been one of those few engaged in the teaching of law who has explored the ethical components of lawyering; his example has been a great influence on many of us. It seems appropriate, therefore, in this tribute to Louis M. Brown, to consider the role which Christian values may play in producing lawyers who are well-developed in interpersonal as in professional skills.

This essay will seek to relate Christian values to …

Natural Law And Everyday Law, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

Like most terms "natural law" has had, and has, a variety of meanings. In most of its meanings it touches scarcely at all the professional concerns of the lawyer but moves, rather, on a plane widely separated from his daily cares and duties. Thus, for the most part, natural law stands aloof from the urgent here-and-now with which lawyer and judge necessarily are preoccupied; it inhabits a world apart.

In these remarks I hope to suggest an approach to natural law which will make it useful on a day-to-day basis in the perplexities by which practitioners and judges constantly are …

A.I.D.- An Heir Of Controversy, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

What is this thing called artificial insemination? Is it a menace to society? Or is it a fantasy of little moment beyond the precincts of 1984 and the "Brave New World"? Or does the fact lie somewhere in between? Whatever your view, you can readily bolster your position by citing respectable authority. For example, a respected advocate declaims that, "Nothing in modem times has so seriously challenged the basic concept of our society founded as it is on the biological tripod of father, mother and child which we call the family unit." Oppositely, a competent man of medicine notes that, …

Foreword, Joseph O'Meara

Journal Articles

The Natural Law Institute, a function of The Law School of The University of Notre Dame, was organized in 1947. Five annual convocations were held under its auspices, the last one in December of 1951. Thereafter a search was undertaken for a way in which the Institute could function effectively on a year-round rather than a once-a-year basis. After exploring many possibilities, it was decided to publish this journal, the Natural Law Forum.