Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility
Georgetown University Law Center
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
How Must A Lawyer Be? A Response To Woolley And Wendel, David Luban
How Must A Lawyer Be? A Response To Woolley And Wendel, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In Legal Ethics and Moral Character, 23 GEO. J. LEGAL Ethics, Alice Woolley and W. Bradley Wendel argue that theories of legal ethics may be evaluated by examining the kind of person a lawyer must be to conform to the normative demands of the theory. In their words, theories of legal ethics musts answer questions not only of what a lawyer must do, but how a lawyer must be. Woolley and Wendel examine three theories of legal ethics—those of Charles Fried, William Simon, and myself—and conclude that the theories they discuss impose demands on agency that are not realistic, functional, …
The Sacrificial Yoo: Accounting For Torture In The Opr Report, David Cole
The Sacrificial Yoo: Accounting For Torture In The Opr Report, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
When the Justice Department finally released the report of its Office of Professional Responsibility on the “torture memos,” recommending that the initial torture memo’s authors, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, be referred for bar discipline, John Yoo declared victory in op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer. The report itself concluded that Yoo and Bybee had acted unethically, and quoted many of Yoo’s successors in office as condemning the memos as, among other things “slovenly,” “riddled with error,” and “insane.” But Yoo claimed victory because Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis vetoed its recommendation that he be referred …
Rights Talk And Patient Subjectivity: The Role Of Autonomy, Equality And Participation Norms, Nan D. Hunter
Rights Talk And Patient Subjectivity: The Role Of Autonomy, Equality And Participation Norms, Nan D. Hunter
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Patients themselves have transformed the role of the patient in the health care system, making it far more complex than it ever has been before. As a result, the conceptual root of our contemporary understandings of “patient” is an assumption of autonomous subjectivity, i.e., of an individual aware of and capable of acting on her choices for medical care. The Symposium on Patient-Centered Health Law and Ethics of which this Article is a part considers the most recent stage in this evolution of meanings: the concept of patient-centeredness, with its implication of provider deference to the patient’s perspective. Throughout the …
The Conscience Of A Prosecutor, David Luban
The Conscience Of A Prosecutor, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay, a version of the 2010 Tabor Lecture at Valparaiso Law School, examines issues about the role of a prosecutor in the adversary system through the lens of the following question: Should a prosecutor throw a case to avoid keeping men who he thinks are innocent in prison? This issue came to prominence in 2008, when Daniel Bibb, a New York City prosecutor, told newspaper reporters that he had done so in connection with a 1991 murder conviction that he had been assigned to reinvestigate after new evidence emerged that the wrong men had been convicted and were serving …
David Luban, Review Of Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy In A Democratic Age, David Luban
David Luban, Review Of Daniel Markovits, A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy In A Democratic Age, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Daniel Markovits offers a novel defense of the traditional partisan advocate’s role, based on the demands of personal integrity. Although he insists that the adversary system requires lawyers to lie and cheat (regardless of the particular ethics rules in place), it is possible to redescribe these lawyerly vices as the virtue of fidelity to a client, expressed through what John Keats called “negative capability”—a suppression of the self in order to allow someone else’s story to shine forth. These are first-personal moral ideals, and Markovits argues against the primacy of second- and third-personal moral ideals (such as Kantianism and utilitarianism) …
The Rule Of Law And Human Dignity: Reexamining Fuller’S Canons, David Luban
The Rule Of Law And Human Dignity: Reexamining Fuller’S Canons, David Luban
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Lon Fuller offered an analysis of the rule of law in the form of eight ‘canons’ of lawmaking. He argued (1) that these canons constitute a ‘procedural natural law’, as distinct from traditional ‘substantive’ natural law; but also (2) that lawmaking conforming to the canons will enhance human dignity—a ‘substantive’ result. This paper argues the following points: first, that Fuller mischaracterized his eight canons, which are substantive rather than procedural; second, that there is an important sense in which they enhance human dignity; third, that they fail to enhance human dignity to the fullest extent because they understand it in …
Mapping The Issues: Public Health, Law And Ethics, Lawrence O. Gostin
Mapping The Issues: Public Health, Law And Ethics, Lawrence O. Gostin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The field of public health is typically regarded as a positivistic pursuit and, undoubtedly, our understanding of the etiology and response to disease is heavily influenced by scientific inquiry. Public health policies, however, are shaped not only by science but also by ethical values, legal norms, and political oversight. Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (expanded and updated 2nd ed., 2010) probes and seeks to illuminate this complex interplay, through a careful selection of government reports, scholarly articles, and court cases together with discussion and analysis of critical problems at the interface of law, ethics, and public health. The …