Law | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

2006 Changes To The Florida Rules Of Professional Conduct, Heather P. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Eliminating Political Maneuvering: A Light In The Tunnel For The Government Attorney-Client Privilege, Patricia E. Salkin, Allyson Phillips

Scholarly Works

The long recognized common-law privilege afforded to certain conversations between attorneys and their clients has been the subject of troubling opinions when the lawyer and client are high ranking government officials. In a series of opinions from the 7th, 8th and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeals, the courts refused to recognize the existence of the attorney-client privilege for the government actors under the circumstances surrounding the cases. However, recent opinions from the 2nd Circuit state that these other courts were simply wrong, setting the stage perhaps, for the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the issue. Whether this privilege is equally …

Go to article

Judicial Ethics, The Appearance Of Impropriety, And The Proposed New Aba Judicial Code, Ronald D. Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

We sometimes think, loosely, that ethics is good and that therefore more is better than less. But more is not better than less, if the more exacts higher costs, measured in terms of vague rules that impose unnecessary and excessive burdens. Overly-vague ethics rules impose costs on the judicial system and the litigants, which we should weigh when determining whether to impose ill-defined and indefinite ethics prohibitions on judges. Unnecessarily imprecise ethics rules allow and tempt critics, with minimum effort, to levy a plausible and serious charge that the judge has violated the ethics rules. Overuse not only invites abuse …