Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Crisis In The Legal Profession: Don’T Mourn, Organize!, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

The field of legal ethics, as we know it today, has grown out of thoughtful, systematic grounding of lawyers’ duties in a comprehensive understanding of lawyers’ roles and the situating of lawyers’ roles in underlying theories of law, morality and justice. Unfortunately, the field of theoretical legal ethics has mostly lost track of the thing at the heart of a lawyers’ role: the integrity of the lawyer-client relationship. The field of theoretical legal ethics has developed in ways that are deeply lawyer-centered rather than fundamentally client-centered. This paper, which was delivered at Hofstra Law School as the Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor …

Legal Ethics Scholarship Of Ted Schneyer: The Importance Of Being Rigorous, The Festschrift For Ted Schneyer Lawyer Regulation For The 21st Century: Foreword, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This collection on "Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century" celebrates Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship. From my perspective as Ted's friend and colleague in the field of legal ethics, it is obvious how richly he deserves this festschrift, and it is my privilege to be invited to contribute its foreword. But to someone outside the field, many questions might be raised. Why celebrate legal scholarship? Why celebrate legal ethics scholarship? Why celebrate Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship? And why celebrate it by collecting writings on the theme of Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century? Though I have no desire to …

Prosecutors' Ethical Duty Of Disclosure In Memory Of Fred Zacharias , Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In the spring of 2009, I sent Fred Zacharias an e-mail to let him know that the American Bar Association's (ABA) Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, on which I was serving, was working on an opinion on prosecutorial ethics and to suggest that once it was published, the opinion might be fodder for our next article. Over the preceding decade, Fred and I had coauthored five articles on the regulation of prosecutors,' and various others on the regulation of lawyers in general, but at that time, we had no work in progress and had been out of touch …

Medical Malpractice Mediation: Benefits Gained, Opportunities Lost, Carol B. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, the United States healthcare system has begun to use mediation to facilitate communication between patients and physicians after an adverse medical event, to ease tensions among members of care-giving teams, to resolve medical malpractice claims, and to help family members and medical professionals make awesome and wrenching decisions at the end of life. Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 will produce new controversies and increase the need for mediation. Patients, families, physicians, nurses, other healthcare professionals, and administrators will require help managing the disagreements that arise as they adapt to the …

The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The broad goal of this paper is to describe the need, and provide a framework, for engaging in cross-cultural conversations among lawyers, law teachers, and others, who are using legal ethics as a vehicle for improving the legal professions and the delivery of legal services. All legal cultures struggle with the question of how to educate students and lawyers to be ethical professionals and how to regulate the legal profession effectively. The purpose of the cross-cultural conversations discussed in this paper would be to develop principles of legal ethics education, professional development, and regulation of the legal professions that can …

American Vertigo: Dual Use, Prison Physicians, Research, And Guantanamo, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Physicians can be used by governments for nonmedical purposes, and physician acceptance of their nonmedical use is usually denoted as "dual loyalty, " although it is more analytically helpful to frame it "dual use. " Dual use of physicians has been on display at Guantanamo where physicians have consistently been used to break hunger strikes as part of the military security mission in ways that directly violate medical ethics. Guantanamo itself has also been seen worldwide as a uniquely horrible prison, which can tell us little about other American prisons. The contrary seems to be true: Guantanamo, and the use …

Tweeting To Topple Tyranny, Social Media And Corporate Social Responsibility: A Reply To Anupam Chander, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay offers critical reflections on the role of social media in social change and outlines how the obligation of corporations in the information communications technology sector to avoid complicity in rights violations may evolve over time. Part I explores the Internet's potential to further democratic discourse and inclusion or foster discrimination and exclusion. It also queries whether the Internet industry has an obligation to protect against hate propaganda. Part II examines whether other industry sectors can also be said to have special obligations based on the human rights consequences of their conduct. Part III explains the nature of the …

Gift Giving To Biobanks, Leonard H. Glantz, Patricia Roche, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

We agree with Mark Rothstein's goal of giving tissue donors control over their donated tissues. But we think using the research model as the basis for attaining this goal, while widely employed and accepted, should be abandoned.

The research regulations were originally adopted to deal with interventions on living human beings, not on the tissue of human beings. The Nuremberg Code (a reaction to concentration camp experiments), the Willowbrook experiment, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and the other examples of the abuse of research subjects that provided the rationale for regulating research on human subjects clearly had nothing to do with …

It's Not Funny: Creating A Professional Culture Of Pro Bono Commitment, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Colbert challenges the popular view that regards lawyers as selfish, greedy and uncaring to the legal needs of the outside community. In his article, he recognizes that the lawyers with whom he is familiar are fulfilling the lawyer’s ethical obligation of engaging in pro bono service and “provid[ing] legal services to those unable to pay,” while also embracing the language in the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct that refers to the attorney “as a public citizen who has a special responsibility to the quality of justice.” Professor Colbert asks colleagues in the legal academy whether they …

The Madoff Scandal, Market Regulatory Failure And The Business Education Of Lawyers, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This essay suggests that a deficiency in legal education is a contributing cause of the regulatory failure. The most scandalous malfeasance of this new era, the Madoff Ponzi scheme, evinces the failure of improperly trained lawyers and regulators. It also calls into question whether the prevailing regulatory philosophy of disclosure of disclosure is sufficient in a complex market. This essay answers an important question underlying these considerations: What can legal education do to better train business lawyers and regulators for a market that is becoming more complex? One answer, it suggests, is a simple one: law schools should teach a …

Lawyers In Character And Lawyers In Role, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Legal ethicists have long been fascinated by the relationships between lawyers’ roles in an adversary system of justice and the character, attitudes, or dispositions that best suit the practice of law. Leonard Riskin’s scholarship has explored how lawyers’ practice of mindfulness can improve their legal practice, and his claim in this body of work – that the practice of mindfulness helps to develop the internalized trait of mindfulness – ties his scholarship to the work of legal ethicists who have endeavored to develop character-based theories of legal ethics. Riskin’s analysis of how lawyers might incorporate mindfulness into law practice also …

A Tale Of Two Judges : A Judge Advocate’S Reflections On Judge Gonzales’S Apologia, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This is a response to - and reflection about - Judge Alberto Gonzales's essay in the Texas Tech Law Review entitled "Waging War Within the Constitution" 42 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 843 (2010). It argues that national security law policy in an era of complex challenges is best designed when the expertise of the widest number of knowledgeable practictioners is brought to bear in a principled and fearless manner.

It's Not My Problem? Wrong: Prosecutors Have An Important Ethical Role To Play, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Navigating The Murky Waters Of Untruth In Negotiation: Lessons For Ethical Lawyers, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

This article answers the following questions: What does the law-both general principles applicable to truthfulness in negotiation and professional responsibility rules- say about this dilemma? What do we know about the practice of truthfulness in lawyer negotiations? What have social scientists learned about deception in negotiations over the last few decades? Finally, what lessons can be drawn for lawyers seeking to behave ethically, as well as for those interested in assisting lawyers navigate the “murky waters of untruth?

Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the construction of cardboard clients in legal ethics has disserved legal ethics by obscuring what is arguably a more central problem of legal professionalism: the problem of legal objectification. The problem of legal objectification is the tendency of lawyers to "issue-spot" their clients as they would the facts on a blue-book exam, overemphasizing the clients' legal interests and minimizing or ignoring the other cares, commitments, relationships, reputations and values that constitute the objectives clients bring to legal representation. This Article proposes an alternative ideal of legal professionalism for "three-dimensional clients" based on helping clients articulate and …

An Introduction To The Financial Action Task Force And Its 2008 Lawyer Guidance, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarship

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a thirty-eight-member intergovernmental organization whose mission is to fight money laundering and terrorism financing; the U.S. is a founding member of the FATF. The FATF is best known for its 40 Recommendations, many of which are directed towards various kinds of “gatekeepers” who are in a position to facilitate or inhibit money laundering and terrorism financing. (These were previously known as the 40+9 Recommendations). Lawyers are among those to whom the FATF’s recommendations apply. This article provides the introduction for the Journal of the Professional Lawyer’s Symposium about the application of the FATF …

The Lesson Of The Irish Family Pub: The Elder Clinic Path To A More Thoughtful Practice, Katherine C. Pearson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, the Director of the Elder Law Clinic at Pennsylvania State University provides insight into the development of Elder Law as a unique discipline by tracking the history and challenges faced by her program as it approaches ten years of operation. A core focus of the Elder Law clinic, beyond practical experience, is to expose its students to the ethical issues confronted in Elder Law practice. Students in the clinic combine classroom discussions with practical experience representing clients, thereby becoming better prepared for their professional futures, while also gaining appreciation for the special concerns of the elderly client. …

You Do Have To Keep Your Promises: A Disgorgement Theory Of Contract Remedies, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law is generally understood to require no more of a person who breaches a contract than to give the injured promisee the "benefit of the bargain." The law is thus assumed to permit a promise-breaker to keep any profit remaining from breach, after putting the victim in the position he would have been in had the promise been performed. This conventional description is radically wrong: across a wide range of circumstances, standard contract doctrines actually do require people to keep their promises, or to disgorge their entire profit from breach if they do not. Rather than protecting the expectation …

Deferring Ineffectiveness Claims To Collateral Review: Ensuring Equal Access And A Right To Appointed Counsel, Thomas M. Place

Faculty Scholarship

The article addresses a problem in criminal procedure that leaves an increasingly large number of defendants without a remedy to protect their right to effective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal. The problem stems from the decision of states to move ineffectiveness claims from direct appeal to the post-conviction process and the fact that over half the states limit access to post-conviction remedies to defendants who are in custody. If the defendant’s prison sentence is completed during the period direct appeal is pending, or, in some jurisdictions, before the collateral review process is completed, the defendant is …

Liberty Lost: The Moral Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

Marijuana policy analyses typically focus on the relative costs and benefits of present policy and its feasible alternatives. This Essay addresses a prior, threshold issue: whether marijuana criminal laws abridge fundamental individual rights, and if so, whether there are grounds that justify doing so. Over 700, 000 people are arrested annually for simple marijuana possession, a small but significant proportion of the 100 million Americans who have committed the same crime. In this Essay, we present a civil libertarian case for repealing marijuana possession laws. We put forward two arguments corresponding to the two distinct liberty concerns implicated by laws …

Role Differentiation And Lawyer's Ethics: A Critique Of Some Academic Perspectives, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Much recent academic discussion exaggerates the distance between plausible legal ethics and ordinary morality. This essay criticizes three prominent strands of discussion: one drawing on the moral philosophy of personal virtue, one drawing on legal philosophy, and a third drawing on utilitarianism of the law-and-economics variety. The essay uses as a central reference point the "Mistake-of-Law" scenario in which a lawyer must decide whether to rescue an opposing party from the unjust consequences of his own lawyer's error I argue that academic efforts to shore up the professional inclination against rescue are not plausible. I conclude by recommending an older …

Robinson Everett: The Citizen Lawyer Ideal Lives On, David F. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

In this tribute to Professor Robinson O. Everett, Dean David Levi questions the view that the citizen-lawyer or lawyer-statesmen models are in decline. Tracing Professor Everett’s varied career, accomplishments, and commitments to individuals and institutions; Levi contends that Everett combined the lawyer's traditional focus on the individual with an overall dedication to the larger community. Everett was not just a model citizen; he was a lawyer-citizen. Levi contends that the survival of the lawyer-citizen and lawyer-statesmen models is a matter of choice and character. Nothing in the current structure of the legal economy places these models out of reach for …

Is The Appearance Of Impropriety An Appropriate Standard For Disciplining Judges In The Twenty-First Century?, Nancy J. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

In February 2007, the American Bar Association ("ABA") revised its Model Code of Judicial Conduct, including significant changes in both form and substance.  The adoption of the 2007 Judicial Code concluded a three-and-a-half year revision process by the ABA Joint Commission to Evaluate the Model Judicial Code ("Commission"). During the revision process, the Commission solicited comment on a number of provisions that had provoked extensive discussion and controversy in Commission hearings and meetings, including a provision in the 1990 Judicial Code that admonished judges to avoid not only impropriety, but also the appearance of impropriety.

The majority of commentators supported …

In Defense Of Appearances: What Caperton V. Massey Should Have Said, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In June of 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that an elected judge must recuse himself from a case that involves a major campaign contributor. In Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., a coal company had been hit with a $50 million jury verdict. While appealing this verdict, the company's CEO, Don Blankenship, spent $3 million to help a challenger, Brent Benjamin, who had no judicial experience, defeat the incumbent, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Blankenship funded political attack ads by a political organization (And for the Sake of the Kids) that …

The Psychology Of Conflicts Of Interest In Criminal Cases, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

This article demonstrates that current Sixth Amendment jurisprudence fails to account for how defense lawyers respond to conflicts of interest in criminal cases. Too often, the Supreme Court has made assumptions about the behavior of defense lawyers without empirical support. The result has been a confusing doctrinal landscape, which both relies upon and questions the ability of defense lawyers to address and resolve conflicts of interest.

This article fills the gap in existing literature by viewing conflicts of interest in criminal cases through the prism of behavioral economics. The research reveals that defense lawyers are subject to psychological biases that …

No Rational Basis: The Pragmatic Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eric D. Blumenson, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents a critique of marijuana prohibition and suggests some alternative regulatory approaches that would be more productive and consonant with justice. Part I relies on a forty-year empirical record to demonstrate that (1) reliance on a law enforcement approach has aggravated rather than mitigated the risks involved with marijuana use, and (2) criminalization, which results in the arrest of more than 700, 000 Americans annually for possession of any amount of marijuana, is an inhumane and destructive response to an act that almost 100 million Americans have committed. Part II assesses the relative merits of several alternative reform …

Enhancing The Fighting Force: Medical Research On American Soldiers, Catherine L. Annas, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

During President Barack Obama's first primetime press conference, reporters asked primarily about the state of the economy and terrorism. Wedged between questions on these two vital issues was a query from the Washington Post's Michael Fletcher:

Question: What is your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?

Obama: You know, I think it's depressing news.... And if you're a fan of Major League Baseball, I think it - it tarnishes an entire era, to some degree. And it's unfortunate, because I think there are a lot of ballplayers who played it …

The Ethical Visions Of Copyright Law, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay explores the imagined ethics of copyright: the ethical stories that people tell to justify, make sense of, and challenge copyright law. Such ethical visions are everywhere in intellectual property discourse, and legal scholarship ought to pay more attention to them. The essay focuses on a deontic vision of reciprocity in the author-audience relationship, a set of linked claims that authors and audiences ought to respect each other and express this respect through voluntary transactions.

Versions of this default ethical vision animate groups as seemingly antagonistic as the music industry, file sharers, free software advocates, and Creative Commons. …