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Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse
Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse
Katherine R Kruse
Historically, legal ethics has been preoccupied with the moral conflicts that arise when the pursuit of a client’s interests requires a lawyer to harm innocent third parties, undermine the truth-seeking norms of the legal system, or both. But is over-zealous loyalty to clients really the biggest problem in legal professionalism? This Article argues that it is not. Rather, the obsession in legal ethics with the problems of zealous partisanship dates back to the preference of early legal ethicists—many of whom were philosophers—to focus on conflicts between professional role morality and ordinary morality. To generate these conflicts, legal ethicists had to …
What Oaths Meant To The Framers’ Generation: A Preliminary Sketch, Steve Sheppard
What Oaths Meant To The Framers’ Generation: A Preliminary Sketch, Steve Sheppard
Steve Sheppard
To the Framers’ generation, oaths of office were understood as commitments, both public and personal, which stemmed from a source of morality. Recent discussions have raised concerns over whether or not the closing phrase in many oaths of office, “so help me God,” demonstrates a possible preference by the Framers for religious leaders and commitments to God. Oaths are not only an acceptance of an office itself, but also the acceptance of the office’s obligations. While oaths state an office’s obligations generally, the obligations include all that could be reasonably inferred from the nature of the office, including the use …