Law Commons^™

Principled Opinions, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Brickman is not pleased. Indeed, he is outraged, if the sound and fury of his article is to be taken at face value. He and twenty-five others, lawyers and legal educators, sent the American bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (the "Committee" or "Ethics Committee") a letter (the "Letter") asking for an opinion. They got one which Professor Brickman describes as "wrong as a matter of ethics law, malevolent as a matter of public policy, disingenuous in its presentation, unfounded it [its] critical assumptions ... and blatantly self-interested in elevating lawyers' financial interests above their traditional …

What About The Children? Are Family Lawyers The Same (Ethically) As Criminal Lawyers? A Morality Play, Robert H. Aronson

Articles

A fictional account of a lawyer, representing a woman in a divorce case, who learns from her client that her live-in boyfriend has hit her and her five-year-old daughter. Is her ethical duty to protect the child greater than her responsibility to maintain the attorney-client privilege. She discusses the matter with two evidence professors in search of a solution.

Reap What You Sow, Gordon J. Beggs

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Unfortunately, with the adoption and revision of formal ethics codes, moral teaching has virtually disappeared from American legal ethics. Law professors, generally, do not consider it their responsibility to teach morality, and our profession today lacks a common moral standard. The Judeo-Christian principles expressed in Proverbs, however, provide a timely challenge to lawyers by advocating values that include justice, purity, mercy, honesty and civility.

Why Informed Consent? Human Experimentation And The Ethics Of Autonomy, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

Not long ago, the welfare reform debate took a provocative turn. New Jersey welfare recipients challenged the state's Family Cap rule, which denied additional cash aid to parents who conceive children while on welfare. Welfare rights activists argued that the rule "with[held] benefits to see if [this would] alter human behavior." They insisted that the innovative, but stern, Family Cap rules were effectively experiments on welfare recipients without their consent.

This is a powerful argument. After all, consent enjoys talismanic—if not sacramental—status in modem life and thought; it is our "master concept." But why? Why should consenting mean so much …