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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
What Is A Lawyer? A Reconstruction Of The Lawyer As An Officer Of The Court, Deborah Hussey Freeland
What Is A Lawyer? A Reconstruction Of The Lawyer As An Officer Of The Court, Deborah Hussey Freeland
Deborah M. Hussey Freeland
This paper engages with the central question in legal ethics concerning the lawyer's role, analyzing this fundamental question in terms of professional identity. Literature in this debate frames the lawyer either as a professional who exists entirely to serve her client (the "standard conception"), or as a professional whose primary duties are to the legal system. I reposit and examine the lawyer's professional identity as an officer of the court--an identity marginalized by those who favor the standard conception--noting that the phrase was coined to draw attention to a supplanting threat to legal professionalism. Providing a uniquely detailed examination of …
Plea Bargaining, Discovery, And The Intractable Problem Of Impeachment Disclosures, R. Michael Cassidy
Plea Bargaining, Discovery, And The Intractable Problem Of Impeachment Disclosures, R. Michael Cassidy
R. Michael Cassidy
In a criminal justice system where guilty pleas are the norm and trials the rare exception, the issue of how much discovery a defendant is entitled to before allocution has immense significance. This article examines the scope of a prosecutor’s obligation to disclose impeachment information before a guilty plea. This question has polarized the criminal bar and bedeviled the academic community since the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in United States v. Ruiz (2002). A critical feature of the debate has been the enduring schism between a prosecutor’s legal and ethical obligations – a gulf that the American Bar Association recently …