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Full-Text Articles in Law
In Memory Of Monroe Freedman: The Hardest Question For A Prosecutor, Bennett L. Gershman
In Memory Of Monroe Freedman: The Hardest Question For A Prosecutor, Bennett L. Gershman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
I’ve chosen to honor Monroe Freedman’s iconic essay on the hardest questions for a criminal defense attorney by posing the same question for prosecutors. What is the hardest question for a prosecutor? This in itself is a hard question. The thousands of federal, state, and local prosecutors in the country would likely give widely varying responses – discretionary charging, immunity grants, bargained pleas, unreliable witnesses, police testimony, and disclosure duties, for starters. Too, prosecutors are not a generic group. Just as some defense lawyers might recoil or be indifferent to Freedman’s provocative thesis, so might many prosecutors reject or be …
In Defense Of The Devil’S Advocate, Lonnie T. Brown
In Defense Of The Devil’S Advocate, Lonnie T. Brown
Scholarly Works
mong the many controversial positions for which Monroe Freedman advocated during his illustrious career, the one that I find most surprising and uncharacteristic is his contention that lawyers who undertake morally questionable representations have a duty to explain or justify their choice of client. Specifically, in 1993 Professor Freedman penned a well-known column in the Legal Times — titled “Must You Be the Devil’s Advocate?” — in which he took Professor Michael Tigar to task for his representation of reputed Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. Professor Freedman tacitly criticized Professor Tigar for his client choice and expressly called upon him …
Institutional And Individual Justification In Legal Ethics: The Problem Of Client Selection, W. Bradley Wendel
Institutional And Individual Justification In Legal Ethics: The Problem Of Client Selection, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Institutional And Individual Justification In Legal Ethics: The Problem Of Client Selection, W. Bradley Wendel
Institutional And Individual Justification In Legal Ethics: The Problem Of Client Selection, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Monroe Freedman is well known as a proponent of the "standard conception" of legal ethics - that is, that a lawyer cannot be criticized in moral terms for actions taken in a representative capacity. Surprisingly, however, Freedman has argued that client selection is a decision for which a lawyer may be required to provide a justification in ordinary moral terms. This apparent inconsistency reveals a conceptual distinction in normative ethical theory, which is often blurred, between justifying a practice (in this case, the legal system or some specialized practice such as criminal defense) and justifying an action falling within the …
Civil Obedience, W. Bradley Wendel
Civil Obedience, W. Bradley Wendel
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Discussions of legal ethics generally assume that lawyers should deliberate straightforwardly on the basis of reasons to act or refrain from acting. This model of deliberation fails to account for the role of the law in resolving normative disagreement and coordinating social activity by people who do not share comprehensive ethical doctrines. The law represents a collective decision about what citizens ought to do, which replaces the reasons individuals would otherwise have to act. This Article contends that legal ethics ought to be understood as an aspect of this theory of the authority of law. On this account, lawyers have …