Law Commons^™

A History Of Prosecutorial Independence In America, Rebecca Roiphe

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Slides: Flpma In Its Historical Context, John D. Leshy

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

Presenter: John D. Leshy, Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C. Hastings College of the Law

36 slides

This session traces the history of FLPMA including, among other things, its legislative, administrative, and historical antecedents, including for example, the Public Land Law Review Commission’s 1970 report, One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. It then considers FLPMA’s unique public lands policies and requirements and how they are reflected in the BLM’s management of public lands today.

See: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/history/contents.htm

The Last Hurrah: The Kutak Commission And The End Of Optimism, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Sorting: Legal Specialization And The Privatization Of The American Legal Profession, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

Beginning in the 1950s, legal specialization was promoted to the majority of the American legal profession, small firm and solo practice lawyers, by the elite of the bar as the future of legal professionalism. Legal specialization was a form of sorting lawyers, and sorting was contrary to the traditional understanding of an undivided legal profession. Over the course of the next thirty years, this effort succeeded. This new understanding of legal professionalism emphasized the idea of competence based on a deep but particularized knowledge of law. This resulted in a slipping away of the beliefs that law was a public …

Brougham’S Ghost, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

In defending Queen Caroline in the House of Lords, Henry Brougham declared, “[a]n advocate, by the sacred duty of his connection with his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other.” Brougham’s ethic of advocacy has been cited repeatedly as stating the American lawyer’s duty of zealous representation of a client. It has often been called the “classic statement” of zealous representation and representing the “traditional view of the lawyer’s role.”

This essay challenges these conclusions. Brougham’s rhetoric was neither a classic statement of the duty of loyalty to …

Lost And Found: David Hoffman And The History Of American Legal Ethics, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

David Hoffman was a successful Baltimore lawyer who wrote the first study of American

law in 1817 and authored the first maxims of American legal ethics. Yet for more than a century after his death, Hoffman was a forgotten figure to American lawyers. Beginning in the late 1970s, Hoffman was re-discovered, and his writings on legal ethics have been favorably cited.

How and why was Hoffman “lost” to American law for over a century, and why he was “found”? Hoffman was lost to history because his view of ethics was premised on republican virtue, specifically the concept of honor. A …

The Agony Of Modern Legal Ethics, 1970–1985, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

When the American Bar Association (ABA) adopted its Code of Professional Responsibility at its annual meeting in August 1969, the American legal profession was a publicly respected and economically vibrant body. Lawyers, though always more feared than loved, became increasingly important in post-World War II America. The demand for their services exploded for a quarter-century, and lawyers assumed an increased role in the economic and political life of the United States. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the Cold War led American lawyers and other public figures to re-emphasize the rule of law as defining the difference between the United …

The Ethics Of Copyrighting Ethics Rules, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The American Bar Association’s (“ABA”) practice of requiring students to purchase the Model Rules of Professional Conduct is exploitative and unethical. The ABA uses its role in training lawyers to create a situation which all but requires law students and bar applicants to purchase the organization’s own Model Rules. The fact that the Model Rules constitute a substantial revenue stream for the ABA is due less to lawyers’ desire to brush up on Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are not laws, than to the ABA's direct role in approving law schools and its indirect role in licensing lawyers.

Law …

Wrongs Of Ignorance And Ambiguity: Lawyer Responsibility For Collective Misconduct, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Deliberate ignorance and calculated ambiguity are key recurring themes in modern scandals from Watergate to Enron. Actors, especially lawyers, seek to limit responsibility by avoiding knowledge and clear articulation. This essay considers this phenomenon from the point of view of both business organization and legal doctrine. Evasive ignorance and ambiguity seem endemic to a particular organizational model and to a traditional model of legal responsibility. Developments in both law and business, however, suggest that these models are being superceded. Many of the most dynamic businesses now emphasize practices of "transparency" designed to inhibit evasive ignorance and calculated ambiguity. A major …

Enron, Watergate And The Regulation Of The Legal Profession, Arnold Rochvarg

All Faculty Scholarship

The most famous scandal of the twentieth century was the Watergate scandal, which most notably led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as President of the United States. The significance of Watergate, however, extends further than the resignation of Nixon. Because Watergate involved so many lawyers, it had a great impact on the regulation of the legal profession. Although the twenty-first century has just started, the strongest contender for this century's most famous scandal is the Enron scandal. Although the Enron scandal is identified mostly with misconduct by accountants and corporate officials, it too involved lawyers and has impacted on …

Executive Privilege Since United States V. Nixon: Issues Of Motivation And Accommodation, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Cleaning Up The Legal Debris Left In The Wake Of Whitewater, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have learned a lot in the twenty-five years since Watergate. During the scandal itself, we confirmed that the President is not above the law. We learned that executive privilege is constitutionally protected, but that it is not absolute. And, we learned that a need exists for an independent counsel, but that we don't necessarily need a statute to establish such an office.

Watergate and the Nixon era spawned several so-called "reforms": the establishment of the independent counsel statute, presidential immunity from civil damage suits for official action, and public ownership of the President's official papers. It is interesting and …

Independent Counsel And Vigorous Investigation And Prosecution, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay draws on the examples of Watergate and Iran-Contra to offer a new perspective on Independent Counsel and their ability to investigate and prosecute high-level wrongdoing. The current consensus is that an Independent Counsel, appointed by judges of the special court pursuant to the Ethics in Government Act, will invariably investigate and prosecute crimes more vigorously than a Special Prosecutor appointed by the President or the Attorney General. Watergate and Iran-Contra suggest, however, that there are institutional and political factors that make analysis of the comparative tendencies of the two types of prosecutors more complex and dependent on circumstance. …

Mr. Carter Goes To Washington, Allen K. Rostron

Faculty Works

Jimmy Carter's presidency began like Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), as the tale of an idealistic and innocent outsider making his way from a humble small town to the nation's capital. Following that promising beginning, disappointment and frustration followed. The story of Carter's undoing found reflection in several films of that era, particularly "...And Justice for All" (1979), "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" (1979), and "Brubaker" (1980). Each concerns an idealistic hero whose uncompromised good intentions cannot prosper. These films capture a unique period when events tested America's enduring belief in the efficacy of virtue.

Legal Ethics After Babel, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Legal ethics owes as much to Richard M. Nixon as it does to philosophy. The rebirth of legal ethics in the last decade is one of many consequences, although possibly the most obscure, of the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in 1972. The criminal politics that destroyed Mr. Nixon's presidency summoned American lawyers to a serious, systematic examination of the morals of their craft.

Leon Jaworski, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

An encyclopedia entry on Lew Jaworski

Law Enforcement And The Separation Of Powers, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The underlying theory and internal coherence of separation of powers is examined. It is noted that the classic rationale for the separation of power is to prevent tyranny by placing execution of the laws in hands independent from those of the legislature. The author summarizes various opinions that contradict this rationale. For example, Synar stated that the legislature and the Executive were directly accountable to the people if they neglected interbranch checks between them. The separation of powers theory, which justifies the claimed enforcement prerogative, is examined from a constitutional perspective. The author also reports on the consequences of federalism. …

Fragile Coalition Interviews - Corrected Transcripts - Cohen, M. Caldwell Butler

Fragile Coalition Interviews

No abstract provided.

The Caveat, September 1973

Caveat

No abstract provided.