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Ethical Lawyering: The Role Of Honor, Conscience, And Codes (Reviewing Michael S. Ariens, The Lawyer’S Conscience: A History Of American Lawyer Ethics), Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Michael Ariens’ new book, The Lawyer’s Conscience: A History of American Lawyer Ethics, is a monumental work, rooted in his decades of excellent scholarship in the fields of attorney professional responsibility and legal history. The Lawyer’s Conscience captures the great sweep and key features of the roughly 250-year period in American legal ethics running from colonial times to the present day. Richly detailed and vividly presented, the story takes the reader on a grand tour of the landmark events and changing ideas that have defined the aspirations, responsibilities, and accountability of members of the American legal profession.

John The Theologian: Towards Integrating Law And Religion, Gordon T. Butler

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

A Human Rights Code Of Conduct: Ambitious Moral Aspiration For A Public Interest Law Office Or Law Clinic, Lauren E. Bartlett

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Article argues that the lack of moral aspiration in legal ethics rules helps contribute to unhappy and unhealthy law students and lawyers, undermining the legal profession. Part II reviews the existing rules and standards that guide the ethical behavior of lawyers in the United States, arguing that all too often the binding rules focus on providing guide posts, signaling where behavior is unacceptable and disciplinary action is possible, instead of providing moral aspiration and options or next steps to describe what a lawyer should do to deal with an ethical dilemma.

Part III of this …

Rethinking Atticus Finch, Peter Zwick

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Atticus, Thomas, And The Meaning Of Justice, Teresa Godwin Phelps

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jews, Christians, Lawyers, And Money, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Years ago, when I was the resident guru in legal ethics at Washington and Lee University, in the little mountain town of Lexington, Virginia, a reporter from the daily newspaper in Roanoke asked me to identify the most serious ethical issue for American lawyers. My answer: "Money."

Part of that answer reflected the fact that American lawyers make about twice as much money as lawyers in other "developed" countries. And American lawyers make, on the average, fifty percent more than average Americans do. (Reference to averages and means here do not reflect how steep the incline is from the middle …

A Religious Perspective On Legal Practice And Ethics, Joseph Allegretti

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Symbols And Religious Garb In The Courtroom: A Catholic Lawyer And The Church's Social Teaching, F. Giba-Matthews

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bibliography: Selected Bibliography: Religion And Lawyering

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Inaugural Howard Lichtenstein Lecture In Legal Ethics: Lawyer Professionalism As A Moral Argument, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The recurrent movement to call or recall lawyers to professionalism is a moral argument. It is an argument made to individual lawyers, a claim among lawyers, that professionalism has to do with being a good person.

I see two aspects to the claim that professionalism is a moral value: one aspect says to a person "be professional." It is an admonition to virtue. The other aspect says to a person, "be in the profession—be of it," with an appeal that seems familiar from other admonitions we have heard to align ourselves with groups that are supposed to make us better …

Legal Ethics After Babel, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Legal ethics owes as much to Richard M. Nixon as it does to philosophy. The rebirth of legal ethics in the last decade is one of many consequences, although possibly the most obscure, of the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in 1972. The criminal politics that destroyed Mr. Nixon's presidency summoned American lawyers to a serious, systematic examination of the morals of their craft.

The Legal Ethics Of Belonging, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Socrates went around Athens telling law teachers and law students that their highest concern should be to be good people. And, he said, the next and consequent concern of the profession should be to show the citizens of Athens how to be good people. For Socrates, as for virtually all of classical moral philosophy and much of Jewish and Christian moral theology, ethical discussion is discussion about the good person. When we talk about Aristotle's man of practical wisdom, or when we talk about heroes, saints, role models, paragons, or professional examplars, it is the good person we are talking …

Ethics: Professionalism, Craft, And Failure, James R. Elkins

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …