Law Commons^™

A Skeptical Answer To Edmundson's Contextualism: What We Know We Lawyers Know, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Ethics In An Atmosphere Of Skepticism And Relativism, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I would like to do several things in this essay. First, I am interested in the sources of students' wariness about moral reasoning and claims about objectivity and truth in ethics. Sometimes I feel like a teacher of geography who must confront a deeply entrenched belief that the earth is flat. The earth is not flat, nor is ethics just a matter of opinion, but one wonders why students persist in thinking the opposite. Teaching effectively requires an understanding of where students are coming from. Accordingly, the opening section of this essay is structured around a series of hypotheses to …

Are Agreements To Keep Secret Information In Discovery Legal, Illegal Or Something In Between?, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

For at least eight years before the public and government authorities learned of the apparently dangerous combination of Ford Explorer sport utility vehicles ("SUVs") and their Bridgestone/Firestone brand of tires, Firestone had been settling lawsuits involving injuries and deaths caused by their tires failing on Ford SUVs. These settlements included terms requiring the plaintiffs and their lawyers to keep quiet about the settlements and about information learned through discovery, including information that might have alerted the public or the government to just how unsafe the Explorer/Firestone combination actually was. In some cases, these secrecy provisions were reinforced by court protective …

Lying And Lawyering: Contrasting American And Jewish Law, Steven Resnicoff

College of Law Faculty

Can desirable ends justify what would otherwise be undesirable means? The answers to this question depends on a variety of factors, including the ends to be accomplished, the means to be employed, the person who would use them, and the parties against whom they would be directed. This article begins by discussing American rules regarding lying by lawyers. The article argues that those rules place insufficient importance on the protection of innocents, have a corrosive effect on the moral values of lawyers who obey them and alienate lawyers who disobey them. The article then examines the Jewish law approach which, …

Ethics For Skeptics, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the themes of the 2002 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS") has been that we, as teachers, must do better at engaging our students "where they're at." A number of speakers on various panels addressed the consumerist mentality among students, the desire of a population raised on MTV for multimedia lectures that resemble rapidly paced entertainment with high production values, and the suspicion of students toward claims of authority by teachers that are not backed up by respect and hard work. In addition, I would add a further observation as a teacher of ethics …

Is Tom Shaffer A Covenantal Lawyer?, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

In this festschrift article in honor of Tom Shaffer, the author considers what Shaffer’s work may share with “covenantal” ethics, a form of ethical argument that is not interchangeable with other traditions familiar from Shaffer’s body of work, such as the ethics of friendship or care or the ethics of virtue. Describing the ancient understanding of covenants, the article explores a few of the complexities arising from covenantal ethics in a professional context, themes such as the creation of obligation by historical decision, which has implications for the treatment of strangers; the ambivalence of covenantal ethics on the value of …

Sectarian Reflections On Lawyers' Ethics And Death-Row Volunteers, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

What should lawyers think about and respond to death-row volunteers? When a defendant accused of a capital crime attempts to plead guilty, or instructs his lawyer not to present a particular defense; when a convicted killer refuses to permit the introduction of potentially life-saving mitigating evidence - or even urges the jury to impose a death sentence - at the sentencing phase of a death-eligible case; when a condemned inmate refuses to file, or to appeal the denial of, habeas corpus and other post-conviction petitions for relief; when he elects not to object to a particular capital-punishment method, to call …

Legal Ethics Must Be The Heart Of The Law School Curriculum Symposium: Recommitting To Teaching Legal Ethics- Shaping Our Teaching In A Changing World, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Despite what seems to be far greater attention paid to the teaching of legal ethics than to any other law school subject, legal ethics remains no better than a second class subject in the eyes of students and faculty. This essay suggests that all efforts at innovation in legal ethics teaching are doomed to a marginal impact at best. Only recognition that legal ethics is the most important subject in the law school curriculum will lead to real and significant changes in the teaching of legal ethics. If the commitment of the legal profession and of legal academia to producing …

Sharing Accounting's Burden: Business Lawyers In Enron's Dark Shadows, Lawrence A. Cunningham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

A familiar pass-the-buck pas de deus in deal meetings occurs when the accountant says, after an impasse, "that's a legal problem" while the lawyer says "that's an accounting problem." The truth is, both are right; the trouble is, as Enron shows, prevailing professional cultures create a crack between law and accounting that resolute fraud artists exploit, not cultures that emphasize the intersection of law and accounting that should foil would-be fraudsters. As policymakers rush to respond to Enron, this perspective on law and accounting should be appreciated, as should Enron's place in soecity's parade of corporate debacles. At Enron's core …

Using The Pervasive Method Of Teaching Legal Ethics In A Property Course, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The first-year introductory course in property law is about all that is left of the traditional black-box curriculum. It is where beginning law students cope with and despair of the arcana of English common law; where, with more detachment than, say, in the torts course, analysis of appellate opinions is what "thinking like a lawyer" means, with no more than peripheral and begrudging attention to modem legislation and administrative law; where legal reasoning is a stretching exercise and initiatory discipline. And, incidentally, surviving bravely the rude invasion of teachers of public law, it is where a teaching lawyer can point …

The Bounds Of Zeal In Criminal Defense: Some Thoughts On Lynne Stewart, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What caused Lynne Stewart, after more than two decades of defense lawyering in the best tradition of the legal profession to cross the line? Holding aside the political climate of the times, did Stewart's approach to lawyering--whether in political or not terribly political cases--lead to her demise? Is her approach to lawyering different from most of the bar?

This paper discusses the conduct that led to Stewart's prosecution and her approach to lawyering generally. The author examines whether her view of zeal and devotion is at odds with the prevailing ethics and ethos of defense lawyering, and, if not, what …

Unconscionable Lawyers, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Midrash On Rabbi Shaffer And Rabbi Trollope, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thomas Shaffer is the most unusual, and in many ways the most interesting, contemporary writer on American legal ethics. A lawyer impatient with legalisms and hostile to rights-talk, a moral philosopher who despises moral philosophy, a Christian theologian who refers more often to the rabbis than to the Church Fathers, a former law school dean who is convinced that law schools have failed their students by teaching too much law and too little literature, a traditionalist who' wholeheartedly embraces feminism, an apologist for the conservative nineteenth-century gentleman who describes his own politics as "left of center," Shaffer is a complex …

Administrative Adjudication In Kentucky: Ethics And Unauthorized Practice Considerations, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is an extended version of a presentation I made at a training course for hearing officers sponsored by the Office of the Attorney General, Division of Administrative Hearings. In my original presentation, I was asked to focus on the ethics of the administrative adjudicator. I was asked to answer some specific questions, which I will include here for the reader's benefit. In this more complete treatment, I would also like to discuss the ethics of lawyers and other representatives appearing before administrative agencies.

The Kentucky Courts had begun to "judicialize" the administrative hearing process in the early 1970's, …

Professional Discipline For Law Firms? A Response To Professor Schneyer’S Proposal, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.1(a) requires individual partners to make "reasonable efforts" to ensure that their firm has measures in effect that give "reasonable assurance" that all lawyers in the firm conform to ethical rules. Similarly, Model Rule 5.3(a) imposes upon individual partners the obligation of making "reasonable efforts" to ensure that the firm has measures in place giving "reasonable assurance" that the conduct of non-lawyers affiliated with the firm is compatible with the partner's professional obligations. These rules were adopted to encourage firms to create firm cultures and institute prophylactic policies and procedures--an "ethical infrastructure"--that would prevent misconduct …

The Lawyer As Consensus Builder: Ethics For A New Practice, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I explore the roles of lawyers in alternative dispute resolution ("ADR"), including traditional roles in arbitration and "new" roles in mediation and facilitation. I also discuss how conventional ethics rules for lawyers fail to provide guidance and "best practices" for lawyers who serve in these new roles. State legislatures and professional associations, such as the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"), the Center for Public Resources Institute for Dispute Resolution ("CPR"), and the Association of Conflict Resolution, have adopted ethical codes for mediators and arbitrators. Select professional associations are also developing "best practice" guides for the provision of ADR …