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The Wild Mid-West: Missouri Ethics And Campaign Finance Under A Narrowed Corruption Regime, Dan Schnurbusch Nov 2015

The Wild Mid-West: Missouri Ethics And Campaign Finance Under A Narrowed Corruption Regime, Dan Schnurbusch

Missouri Law Review

This Note explores some of the history of Missouri’s attempts at ethics reform, recent developments in Missouri’s ethics legislation and federal First Amendment jurisprudence, and how these issues commingle to produce a dangerous climate in which to operate a representative democracy. This Note confronts some of the Supreme Court’s conclusions in both Citizens United and McCutcheon, exposes some of the deleterious societal and legal effects of these rulings, and provides some possible courses of action that Missouri and other states might undertake in order to help lay the groundwork for upholding meaningful campaign finance regulation in the future.


Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy Jul 2014

Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy

Faculty Publications

In a trio of recent cases, Padilla v. Kentucky, Missouri v. Frye, and Lafler v. Cooper, the U.S. Supreme Court has focused its attention on defense counsel's pivotal role during the plea bargaining process . At the same time that the Court has signaled its willingness to consider ineffective assistance of counsel claims at the plea stage, prosecutors are increasingly requiring defendants to sign waivers that include waiving all constitutional and procedural errors, even unknown ineffective assistance of counsel claims such as those that proved successful in Padilla and Frye. Had Jose Padilla and Galin Frye been forced to sign …


Ethical Problems In Class Arbitration, Andrew Powell, Richard A. Bales Jul 2011

Ethical Problems In Class Arbitration, Andrew Powell, Richard A. Bales

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article examines two significant conflicts of interest that arise in class arbitration in six parts. Part II provides background on the recent evolution of class arbitration, explaining how the Supreme Court had decided several cases involving class arbitration but has not explicitly ruled that class actions are either permitted or forbidden. Part III discusses the conflicts of interest that could arise at the beginning of class arbitration. Part IV discusses conflicts of interest that arise at the end of class arbitration. Part V of this article argues that if and when Congress amends the Federal Arbitration Act to statutorily …


Ensuring The Ethical Representation Of Clients In The Face Of Excessive Caseloads, Peter A. Joy Jun 2010

Ensuring The Ethical Representation Of Clients In The Face Of Excessive Caseloads, Peter A. Joy

Missouri Law Review

This Article is divided into three substantive parts. First, I begin with a short discussion of the most important criminal justice right guaranteed to each of us under the Bill of Rights - the Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel. For most Americans, the right to counsel is obtained through indigent defense providers, and the quality of the representation is inextricably tied to three lesser known rights, or perhaps wishes, found in the Public Defender Bill of Rights: "[t]he right to meaningful, weighted caseload standards"; "[t]he right to judges who understand my [the public defender's] role in the [justice] …


Ethical Obligations Of Indigent Defense Attorneys To Their Clients, Phyllis E. Mann Jun 2010

Ethical Obligations Of Indigent Defense Attorneys To Their Clients, Phyllis E. Mann

Missouri Law Review

This Article is a basic introduction to the provision of indigent defense services in state courts throughout the country and the ethical obligations of the attorneys who provide those services. First, the Article briefly quantifies what currently exists in our right to counsel systems - what we know, and what we do not know. The Article then discusses the rules that generally govern the ethics of representation provided by indigent defense attorneys. Third, the Article examines the measures by which attorneys can know whether they are fulfilling and will continue to fulfill their ethical obligations. Finally, the Article discusses the …


Ethical Considerations In Drafting And Enforcing Consumer Arbitration Clauses, Amy J. Schmitz Oct 2008

Ethical Considerations In Drafting And Enforcing Consumer Arbitration Clauses, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Attorneys face mixed messages regarding consumer arbitration: Mixed professional responsibility rules; mixed legal enforcement; mixed messages from commentators and policymakers; mixed evidence regarding efficiency, cost-savings and fairness. It is therefore doubtful that attorneys would face discipline for drafting or enforcing onerous consumer arbitration provisions they believe in good faith to be lawful. Professional discipline rules, however, merely set the floor for ethical conduct and can only go so far in dictating morals or teaching values. Indeed, an attorney's commitment to ethics and public service "must begin at home." Moreover, the bottom line is: "If you have the wrong values, your …


Ethical Exploitation Of The Unrepresented Consumer, The, Victoria J. Haneman Jun 2008

Ethical Exploitation Of The Unrepresented Consumer, The, Victoria J. Haneman

Missouri Law Review

This article begins in Section I with a brief overview of the debt industry. Section II describes the circumstances of an unrepresented defendant in the adversarial system of justice. The conventional codes of professional responsibility are weighed against a broader framework of normative ethics in Section III. Section IV illustrates how the particulars of the debt-buying setting are emblematic of broader issues. Two solutions are then discussed in Section V: One broadly targets the failure of attorneys' ethical codes to account for the collapse of the adversarial myth in cases involving unrepresented litigants; the other is a more tailored solution …


Ethics Of Collaborative Law, The, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2008

Ethics Of Collaborative Law, The, Scott R. Peppet

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article argues that Collaborative Law can be permissible under the current rules of legal ethics. At the same time, it contends that this is not a foregone conclusion, and that certain Collaborative Law contracts or arrangements are more suspect than others. In short, it argues that collaborative lawyers need to be extremely careful in how they go about their practice if they wish to withstand ethical scrutiny.


How Can A Mediator Be Both Impartial And Fair: Why Ethical Standards Of Conduct Create Chaos For Mediators, Susan Nauss Exon Jul 2006

How Can A Mediator Be Both Impartial And Fair: Why Ethical Standards Of Conduct Create Chaos For Mediators, Susan Nauss Exon

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article focuses on newly developing Standards designed to regulate the mediation industry with respect to civil disputes. The particular focus is on the mediator's requirements of neutrality and impartiality and whether these requirements are impacted by assurances of a fair result and other fairness concepts such as a balanced process and informed decision making. The basic problem is that mediators are guided by Standards and stand-alone definitions of mediation, yet many Standards contain contradictory or vague provisions. Furthermore, the mediator's actual role may be dictated by her own personal style, values, and commercial needs in conjunction with the parties' …


Are You Misappropriating Client Funds - Missouri's Iolta Plan After Mottl, Timothy D. Steffens Jan 2006

Are You Misappropriating Client Funds - Missouri's Iolta Plan After Mottl, Timothy D. Steffens

Missouri Law Review

In Mottl v. Missouri Lawyer Trust Account Foundation, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District addressed the constitutionality of Missouri's IOLTA program for the first time and held that participation in Missouri's IOLTA program is not state action because of the voluntary nature of the program. 6 By so deciding, the court shifted liability for participation in the program from the state to private attorneys and law firms. As a result, an attorney must inform a client during initial consultation that the attorney or the attorney's firm voluntarily participates in the IOLTA program and that, as a result …


Can A Good Judge Be A Good Politician - Judicial Elections From A Virtue Ethics Approach, Marie A. Failinger Apr 2005

Can A Good Judge Be A Good Politician - Judicial Elections From A Virtue Ethics Approach, Marie A. Failinger

Missouri Law Review

In this Article, I argue that direct judicial elections, at least to the extent that they mimic other general elections, are not the wisest course for selecting judges, though not precisely for the usual reasons cited by commentatorse.g., that lawyers are in a better position to evaluate the merits of judicial candidates than the public because they are less likely to be swayed by singleissue politics or irrelevant matters.8 In fact, it seems to me that both the perspectives of the practicing bar and the public are necessary to hold judges accountable. For example, a lawyer may be in a …


New Era Of Disclosure: California Judicial Council Enacts Arbitrator Ethics Standards - Ethics Standards For Neutral Arbitrators In Contractual Arbitration, A, Keisha I. Patrick Jan 2003

New Era Of Disclosure: California Judicial Council Enacts Arbitrator Ethics Standards - Ethics Standards For Neutral Arbitrators In Contractual Arbitration, A, Keisha I. Patrick

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Although the current CJC ethics rules consist of seventeen standards and several subsections "intended to guide the conduct of arbitrators, '17 this Note will focus only on the disclosure requirements. The Note will also compare the CJC standards with disclosure rules that provider organizations have previously enacted.


A Bludgeon By Any Other Name: The Misuse Of Ethical Rules Against Prosecutors To Control The Law Of The State, Frank O. Bowman Iii Apr 1996

A Bludgeon By Any Other Name: The Misuse Of Ethical Rules Against Prosecutors To Control The Law Of The State, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

My objective here is threefold: (1) to explain these ethical rules and demonstrate how each is in conflict with longstanding principles of federal criminal law; (2) to explain why these rules are illegitimate, both as rules of ethics and as rules of positive law; and (3) to offer some observations on how the dispute over these rules can sharpen our thinking about the nature and proper limits of ethical rules governing lawyers.


Ethics: No One Ever Said It Would Be Easy: Bush's Contribution To Mediation Practice, Albie M. Davis Jan 1994

Ethics: No One Ever Said It Would Be Easy: Bush's Contribution To Mediation Practice, Albie M. Davis

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The beauty of Robert Baruch Bush's research on ethics is that his conclusions grow out of the real life experiences of mediators.' Yes, his interpretation is influenced by his own biases, and yes, the Florida mediation scene, where he made his observations, is not a microcosm of the rest of the nation or the world; nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, he did a remarkable job of capturing the dilemmas that most mediators face.


Easier Said Than Done: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas In Policy And Practice, Linda Stamato Jan 1994

Easier Said Than Done: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas In Policy And Practice, Linda Stamato

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This is not to argue against core principles. There is, I think, a consensus on these: responsible and fair dealing, disclosure of personal conflicts, good faith, diligence, impartiality, confidentiality, and, certainly, honesty and integrity. I take these ethical requirements to be the sine qua non of professional mediation practice; the primary representations to be made prior to, and, indeed, to be adhered to in the course of mediation. SPIDR attempted to codify these values in its Ethical Standards of Professional Responsibility, which were adopted by the SPIDR Board in 1986 and confirmed in 1991. What we in mediation practice are …


Study Of Ethical Dilemmas And Policy Implications, A, Robert A. Baruch Bush, Jan 1994

Study Of Ethical Dilemmas And Policy Implications, A, Robert A. Baruch Bush,

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This paper is based on research sponsored by the National Institute for Dispute Resolution and by Hofstra University School of Law. The research involved interviews with roughly eighty mediators working in one of the three areas mentioned above. The mediators were asked to identify situations they had experienced in mediation that, in their view, raised difficult ethical dilemmas on which they felt the need for guidance by professional standards and program policy. This report summarizes and illustrates the findings of the research as to the major types of dilemmas practicing mediators are confronted with and analyzes these dilemmas and their …


Ethical Dilemmas Or Benign Neglect, Richard A. Salem Jan 1994

Ethical Dilemmas Or Benign Neglect, Richard A. Salem

Journal of Dispute Resolution

But, the real message of this study is that guidance for mediators facing ethical dilemmas is long past due. The Florida mediators, as might have been anticipated, are encountering a number of ethical problems that are familiar to mediators elsewhere and that are endemic to practicing in this field. But, as Professor Bush suggests, the interviews indicate that some of the problems confronting Florida mediators result from their being placed in the untenable position of not being provided with: (1) sufficient policy and procedural guidelines; or (2) training to competently mediate cases being referred to them.


Reply To The Commentators On The Ethical Dilemmas Study, A, Robert A. Baruch Bush Jan 1994

Reply To The Commentators On The Ethical Dilemmas Study, A, Robert A. Baruch Bush

Journal of Dispute Resolution

The invitation to republish here the report on my study of mediators' ethical dilemmas was a very gratifying one. My hope was that this report would generate further thought and discussion on this important subject, and this symposium will certainly help to realize that aim. For this I am grateful to the editors of the Journal and their advisor, Professor Leonard Riskin. Moreover, the best part of this invitation was that it contemplated the publication of comments on the report from a number of well-known and thoughtful figures in the mediation field. This kind of public dialogue is something all …


Promises Of Confidentiality: Do Reporters Really Have To Keep Their Word, Harold B. Oakley Jun 1992

Promises Of Confidentiality: Do Reporters Really Have To Keep Their Word, Harold B. Oakley

Missouri Law Review

In an industry in which information is the ultimate commodity, a new dilemma that confronts the media world is whether the First Amendment protects news gatherers from sources who try to enforce promises of confidentiality. The debate raised in Cohen v. Cowles Media Co. pits the First Amendment freedoms of the press and speech against concepts of contracts and torts that are deeply rooted in our legal heritage. At least two reasons make promises of confidentiality important to the newsgathering profession. First, breaking a promise of confidentiality that has induced a source to provide information is dishonorable. Second, sources may …


Chipping Away At Lawyer Veracity: The Aba's Turn Toward Situation Ethics In Negotiations, Ruth Fleet Thurman Jan 1990

Chipping Away At Lawyer Veracity: The Aba's Turn Toward Situation Ethics In Negotiations, Ruth Fleet Thurman

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This Article questions the wisdom of the Model Rule's exceptions to honest dealings in negotiations on several grounds: (1) Proponents of the exceptions have not offered empirical evidence or professional justification for this approach; 16 (2) The approach will further tarnish the profession's image; (3) The approach will create a slippery slope that leads to unintended ethical violations; and (4) The approach will erode the high degree of trust, veracity and integrity required of lawyers as "officer[s] of the legal system."1 7 For these reasons, the Model Rule's exceptions to honesty in negotiations should be abolished by the ABA and …


Waiver Of The Physician-Patient Privilege In Missouri, Thomas E. Toney Jun 1969

Waiver Of The Physician-Patient Privilege In Missouri, Thomas E. Toney

Missouri Law Review

The present Missouri privilege statute is as follows: The following persons shall be incompetent to testify: .... a physician or surgeon, concerning any information which he may have acquired from any patient while attending him in a professional character, and which information was necessary to enable him to prescribe for such patient as a physician or do any act for him as a surgeon. Even though the statute speaks of being "incompetent to testify" the statute has been interpreted to mean that it creates a physician-patient privilege. To claim the benefit of this statute two requirements must be met. First, …