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Full-Text Articles in Law

What About The Children? Are Family Lawyers The Same (Ethically) As Criminal Lawyers? A Morality Play, Robert H. Aronson Jan 1996

What About The Children? Are Family Lawyers The Same (Ethically) As Criminal Lawyers? A Morality Play, Robert H. Aronson

Articles

A fictional account of a lawyer, representing a woman in a divorce case, who learns from her client that her live-in boyfriend has hit her and her five-year-old daughter. Is her ethical duty to protect the child greater than her responsibility to maintain the attorney-client privilege. She discusses the matter with two evidence professors in search of a solution.


Give Them A Sword: Representing Parents In Child Custody Cases, William Tabac Jan 1996

Give Them A Sword: Representing Parents In Child Custody Cases, William Tabac

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

First, this Essay demonstrates that, because the "best interests" standard that states use in awarding custody between parents is so arbitrary, lawyers cannot effectively protect the parental rights of their clients. Next, this Essay contends that, because fit parents will do anything to preserve their bond with their children, the state not only expects them to commit perjury to protect their parental rights, but encourages them to do so. Finally, this Essay argues that lawyers should lay out all possible strategies to their clients even if doing so invites parents to perjure themselves.