Law Commons^™

Public Defenders As Gatekeepers Of Freedom, Alma Magaña

Faculty Articles

Nearly half a million people are currently held in pretrial detention across the United States. Legal scholarship has explored many of the actors and factors contributing to the deprivation of freedom of those presumed innocent. And while the scholarship in these areas is rich, it has primarily focused on certain system actors—including judges, prosecutors, and profit-seeking sheriffs—structural concerns, such as the role race plays in who is being held in pretrial detention, or critiques of the failed promise of algorithms to deliver on bias-free bail determinations. But relatively little scholarship exists about the contributions of public defenders to this deprivation. …

Exit Engineering, Rachel Landy

Faculty Articles

How do business lawyers create value? For nearly forty years, scholars have conceptualized the business lawyer as a “transaction cost engineer” who helps contracting parties efficiently break negotiation stalemates to create more valuable deals. This theory provides meaningful insights about sophisticated corporate law practice, where outside lawyers parachute in to make one-off deals happen. However, it fails to explain the behavior of startup lawyers, who develop long-term relationships with their clients and counsel them on seemingly routine matters, well before a major transaction materializes. These lawyers are not just transaction cost engineers, they are exit engineers. This Article offers a …

When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, And Executioner: Justice In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence (Book Review), Stacy Fowler

Faculty Articles

In When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, former federal judge Katherine Forrest raises concerns over the pervasive use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the American justice system to produce risks and need assessments (RNA) regarding the probability of recidivism for citizens charged with a crime. Forrest’s argument centers on AI’s primary focus on utilitarian outcomes when assessing liberty for individual citizens. This approach leads Forrest to the conclusion that in its current form, AI is “ill-suited to the criminal justice context.” Forrest contends that AI should instead be programmed to focus on John Rawl’ 'concept of justice as …

Rage Against The Machine: Who Is Responsible For Regulating Generative Artificial Intelligence In Domestic And Cross-Border Litigation?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

In 2023, ChatGPT—an early form of generative artificial intelligence (AI) capable of creating entirely new content—took the world by storm. The first shock came when ChatGPT demonstrated its ability to pass the U.S. bar exam. Soon thereafter, the world learned that ChatGPT was being used by both lawyers and judges in actual litigation.

Some within the legal community find the use of generative AI in civil and criminal litigation entirely unproblematic. Others find generative AI troubling as a matter of due process and procedural fairness due to its propensity not only to misinterpret legitimate legal authorities but to create fictitious …

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.

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

Faculty Articles

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality--the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Dispute Resolution In A Feminist Voice, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Faculty Articles

The presence of women in the law has changed the law’s substance, practice, and process. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, whose scholarship centers on this theme, is one such revolutionary woman.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, who I am proud to call my colleague, co-author, and friend (hereinafter referred to as Carrie), began her career in 1977 with a series of simple questions that sparked a breathtaking body of work. Carrie probed the depth of male domination in the realm of law and wondered what changes female representation might engender. In particular, she focused her inquiry on the value orientation each respective gender might bring to …

The Fall Of An American Lawyer, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

John Randall is the only former president of the American Bar Association to be disbarred. He wrote a will for a client, Lovell Myers, with whom Randall had been in business for over a quarter-century. The will left all of Myers’s property to Randall, and implicitly disinherited his only child, Marie Jensen. When Jensen learned of the existence of a will, she sued to set it aside. She later filed a complaint with the Iowa Committee on Professional Ethics and Conduct. That complaint was the catalyst leading to Randall’s disbarment.

Randall had acted grievously in serving as Lovell Myers’s attorney. …

Anti-Discrimination Ethics Rules And The Legal Profession, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

“Reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my Thoughts, and Aim of my Behaviour. How shall I gain a Reputation! How shall I Spread an Opinion of myself as a Lawyer of distinguished Genius, Learning, and Virtue.” So wrote twenty-four-year-old John Adams in his diary in 1759. He had been a licensed lawyer for just three years at that time and had already believed himself to be hounded by “Petty foggers” and “dirty Dablers in the Law”—unlicensed attorneys who, Adams claimed, fomented vexatious litigation for the fees they might earn.

Adams believed his embrace of virtue, along with genius …

The Appearance Of Appearances, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

The Framers argued judicial independence was necessary to the success of the American democratic experiment. Independence required judges possess and act with integrity. One aspect of judicial integrity was impartiality. Impartial judging was believed crucial to public confidence that the decisions issued by American courts followed the rule of law. Public confidence in judicial decision making promoted faith and belief in an independent judiciary. The greater the belief in the independent judiciary, the greater the chance of continued success of the republic.

During the nineteenth century, state constitutions, courts, and legislatures slowly expanded the instances in which a judge was …

Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards "Minimum Competency" During The 2020 Pandemic, Afton Cavanaugh

Faculty Articles

The year 2020 was challenging for the bar exam. The longstanding argument that the bar exam is not a fair measure of the minimum competence of someone to practice law was cast into harsh relief and the truth-that the bar exam tests the privilege of its examinees-became startlingly apparent. Not only did 2020 kick off with a devastating global pandemic, but we also saw the rage against systemic racial injustice reach a boiling point just as we were charged with staying in our homes to avoid contracting COVID-19. With a pandemic raging, overt White supremacy on the rise, and racial …

Lawyers, Mistakes, And Moral Growth (Reviewing Mike H. Bassett, The Man In The Ditch: A Redemption Story For Today), Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

In the literature of legal ethics, relatively little is said about the psychic turmoil that lawyers face while anticipating or defending a grievance, malpractice claim, or criminal charge. Even less is said about how lawyers who are found guilty of violating professional standards should go about rebuilding their reputations and personal lives after such proceedings have run their course, often with embarrassing results having been made public. Against this bleak backdrop, a dazzlingly introspective and hopeful book about lawyers and their mistakes-and about their suffering and possible moral growth-has been published.

The Proposed Rules On Advertising And Solicitation, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

This article addresses the rule proposal appearing as ballot item E for the State Bar of Texas rules vote February 2 to March 4, 2021. The proposed rules dealing with lawyer advertising and solicitation seek to clarify, simplify, and modernize this area of the law, while nevertheless continuing to endorse principles and practices that have proved to be sound.

Model Rule 8.4(G) And The Profession's Core Values Problem, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

Model Rule 8.4(g) declares it misconduct for a lawyer to "engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law." The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted the rule in 2016, in large part to effectuate the third of its four mission goals: Eliminate Bias and Enhance Diversity. The ABA adopted these goals in 2008, and they continue to serve as ABA's statement of its mission.

A …

The Informed Consent Doctrine In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

The doctrine of informed consent is now deeply embedded into the law of legal ethics. In legal malpractice litigation, the doctrine holds that a lawyer has a duty to disclose to a client material information about the risks and alternatives associated with a course of action. A lawyer who fails to make such required disclosures and fails to obtain informed consent is negligent, regardless of whether the lawyer otherwise exercises care in representing a client. If such negligent nondisclosures cause damages, the lawyer can be held accountable for the client's losses.

Shifting the focus of a legal malpractice action from …

The Lawyer As Accomplice: Cannabis, Uber, Airbnb, And The Ethics Of Advising “Disruptive” Businesses, Charles M. Yablon

Faculty Articles

This Article examines the legal and ethical problems of corporate lawyers who advise businesses that operate just beyond the edge of legality. These include manufacturers and sellers of cannabis products (a felony under federal law, even if ostensibly permitted by state statutes) as well as a substantial number of startup companies, like Uber and Airbnb, whose “disruptive” business models involve deliberately violating local laws and ordinances, many of which carry criminal penalties. Under the current Model Rules of Professional Conduct, a lawyer “shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is …

A Lesson In Civility, David A. Grenardo

Faculty Articles

The inherent importance of civility in the legal profession necessitates teaching civility by law schools. This Article demonstrates how civility applies to advocacy and the practice of law, the efficiency of our justice system, lawyer well-being, obtaining a job and professional identity formation, and public confidence in the legal system. The Article can assist courts, attorneys, and professors in understanding civility and its significance. Most critically, this Article provides a turnkey lesson plan for law schools on civility that professors can employ in a variety of classes including, among others, Professional Responsibility, Civil Procedure, and Constitutional Law. Teaching law students …

Law Schools Harm Genizaros And Other Indigenous People By Misunderstanding Aba Policy, Bill Piatt, Moises Gonzales, Katja Wolf

Faculty Articles

Law schools justifiably seek to enroll a diverse student body in order to enrich the academic experience and environment, and to provide attorneys who will serve all segments of our society. American law schools enjoy the constitutional right to maintain such diversity. Indeed, accreditation standards promulgated by the American Bar Association ("ABA") require it. The Association of American Law Schools carries a similar mandate.

In seeking to create a diverse student body, law schools offer applicants the opportunity to identify their backgrounds. There generally is no "diversity police" checking on the accuracy of the self-identification as a member of a …

Mitochondrial Dna Replacement: Moral And Halakhic Concerns, J. David Bleich

Faculty Articles

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), transmitted from mother to child, have their own genetic code that may cause debilitating genetic diseases. To prevent such unfortunate occurrences, researchers have developed a process enabling them to completely replace an ovum’s mitochondria with mitochondria contributed by a donor. Children born by use of this method have genetic material from both the mitochondrial donor and the birth mother; they are “three-parent babies.” Resultant medical, ethical, legal and theological problems are obvious.

Moreover, this technology may pose significant risks to neonates born of such procedures. Certainly no person has the right to cause harm to a fellow …

Ethics In The Legal Industry, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

A brief item in the Hearsay section of the June 2017 ABA Journal was headlined "2%." This number indicated an increase in the percentage of lawyers, from 2012 to 2016, "who worked remotely within the legal industry." Making one's "office" a location other than the physical space leased or owned by oneself or by an employer is hardly news, even as applied to the work of lawyers. Lawyers know as well as anyone that technology allows one to work almost anywhere and, unfortunately, almost any time. What is striking in this brief news item is the use by the flagship …

Conviction Integrity Units Revisited, Barry Scheck

Faculty Articles

“Conviction Integrity Unit” has become a brand name that has good public relations value for an elected official. But what does it really mean? Is it just a fashion accessory, a flashy but empty appellation intended to convey the idea that the office is extremely serious about correcting wrongful convictions and holding its own members accountable for errors or acts of misconduct, but really is not? Is conviction integrity nothing more than a passing fad, a nebulous slogan without real meaning that is good for propaganda purposes, but will not bring about any serious change in the way business is …

Resolving Civil Forfeiture Disputes, Rishi Batra

Faculty Articles

Under a legal process known as civil asset forfeiture, state and federal laws allow law enforcement officials and the government to seize assets from individuals who are not charged with a crime if the property is suspected of being involved in criminal activity. This is true even if the owner of the property is not charged with the underlying crime. Indeed, in 2014, The Washington Post analyzed 400 cases in seventeen states that were examples of civil forfeiture during traffic stops. Police stopped motorists under the pretext of a minor traffic infraction, analyzed the intentions of motorists by assessing nervousness, …

The Rise And Fall Of Social Trustee Professionalism, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

Elite lawyers have long urged the private practice bar to account for the interests of more than their clients in their work. A lawyer who served merely as a "mouthpiece" or "hired gun" of clients failed to meet the standards of professionalism, of failing to act, in Roscoe Pound's words, "in the spirit of a public service." Pound's view, expressed in the mid-20th century, was premised on the ideal that the lawyer pursued a public calling that incidentally was remunerative. This ideal required the lawyer to serve as a social trustee, one encumbered by duties for the benefit of society. …

The High Costs Of Incivility, David A. Grenardo

Faculty Articles

Many law students come to law school after being indoctrinated by television and movies, believing that an effective lawyer must be obstreperous, obnoxious, and rude to be successful. Lawyers, they believe, must fight their opponents on every point at every corner if they want to represent their clients zealously and adequately.

Law students must recognize that incivility by lawyers can lead to significant negative consequences for the client, the attorney herself, and the legal system. Law students must also understand that lawyers can treat opposing counsel with civility while still providing robust, vigorous, and adversarial representation for their clients. This …

Brougham’S Ghost, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

In defending Queen Caroline in the House of Lords, Henry Brougham declared, “[a]n advocate, by the sacred duty of his connection with his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other.” Brougham’s ethic of advocacy has been cited repeatedly as stating the American lawyer’s duty of zealous representation of a client. It has often been called the “classic statement” of zealous representation and representing the “traditional view of the lawyer’s role.”

This essay challenges these conclusions. Brougham’s rhetoric was neither a classic statement of the duty of loyalty to …

Fraud And Abuse In Mesothelioma Litigation, Lester Brickman

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Cure For Young Prosecutors' Syndrome, Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

Although legal scholars treat prosecutors like interchangeable parts, we argue—based on interviews and surveys of over 200 state prosecutors in eight offices—that scholars should be alert to the differences among them, because new prosecutors experience their professional role differently than their veteran colleagues do. This divergence happens because, as new prosecutors gain experience, their professional identities shift—they become more balanced over time. This Article explores the prosecutor’s professional transformation and the possible catalysts for that change.

When experienced prosecutors describe their career trajectories, they regret the highly adversarial posture they adopted earlier in their careers. While the constant quest for …

Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, And Sustainability Education In Aacsb Undergraduate And Graduate Marketing Curricula: A Benchmark Study, Jeananne Nicholls, Joseph F. Hair, Charles B. Ragland, Kurt E. Schimmel

Faculty Articles

AACSB International advocates integration of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability in all business school disciplines. This study provides an overview of the implementation of these three topics in teaching initiatives and assessment in business schools accredited by AACSB International. Since no comprehensive studies have been conducted for the marketing area, the results provide benchmarks as well as thought-provoking material to initiate business school and marketing faculty discussions on integrating the three topics into their curricula.

Legal Ethics, Commercial Practice And The Certainty Imperative: A Cautionary Note, Diane Lourdes Dick

Faculty Articles

The article focuses on the proposed amendments in Model Rule 1.7 under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct which mentions conflicts-of-interest rules. The American Bar Association Ethics 20/20 Commission has been designed to regulate the use of technology in development of global legal practices in the U.S. It informs that policymakers in legal ethics and commercial law help to govern attorney conduct which provides client-centered interests of fairness, loyalty, and independent judgment.

The Critique Of Judgment: Introduction, Angelica Nuzzo, David G. Carlson

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.