Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Mcdade Amendment: Moving Towards A Meaningful Limitation On Wrongful Prosecutorial Contact With Represented Parties, Nina Marino, Richard Kaplan

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

In Part I, this article will examine the anti-contact rule, its history, goals, and the path it has taken in the context of prosecutorial contact with represented parties. Part II will discuss the McDade Amendment, its genesis and purpose. Part III will discuss the struggle undertaken by the Department of Justice [hereinafter "DOJ"] as it seeks to exempt its lawyers from the anti-contact rule. Finally, Part IV looks at arguments for and against prosecutorial exemption from the anti-contact rule.

Beyond The Model Rules: The Place Of Examples In Legal Ethics, Heidi Li Feldman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct defined the agenda for the post- Watergate renaissance in legal ethics. While there had been some form of codified precepts for American lawyers since at least 1908, Watergate inspired a desire to clean up a disgraced profession. The American Bar Association (ABA) promulgated the Model Rules; law schools instituted mandatory courses; and scholars debated and analyzed the new Model Rules. The organized bar devoted much time and attention to developing these guidelines. The mainstream media covered both the bar's original efforts and the subsequent adoption of the Model Rules by particular jurisdictions. Today, forty-three …

Around The Nation, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Popular Media

A number of courts have taken strong steps to deal with issues of lawyer professionalism and competence. Some state appellate courts have declared incivility unacceptable, and some trial courts have closely regulated lawyer conduct in the courtroom. Some state court systems have instituted com­missions, standards and programs to improve significantly professionalism, ethics, and excellence in practice. But more judicial leadership and daily involvement is needed in all these areas. It is this goal that the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) has addressed in its bold and comprehensive National Action Plan on Lawyer Conduct and Professionalism, unanimously adopted by the CCJ …

Resolving The Mult-Fractional Deed Dilemma - Conc.Ord Oil Co. V. Pennzoil Exploration & (And) Production Co. Recent Development, Noelle C. Letteri

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

America's Preoccupation With Ethics In Government Essay., Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Many Americans today expect that the law can, should, and will be used to ensure a level playing field in public life. Americans expect the law to eliminate, insofar as possible, any unfair advantage that might be gained through the use of special connections to those who exercise the power of government. There are numerous rules applicable to judges, lawyers, and public officials that each seek to promote equal treatment for all persons by limiting the ability of persons to use special connections and privileged relationships to gain an advantage in public affairs. There were two threads of development in …

Texas Rule Of Evidence 503: Defining Scope Of Employment For Corporations Comment., Craig W. Saunders

St. Mary's Law Journal

The attorney-corporate client privilege should be regarded as encompassing only communications made to the corporation’s counsel by employees in the scope of their employment. The Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the merger of the Civil and Criminal Rules of Evidence. The merger became effective on March 1, 1998 and is now known as the Texas Rules of Evidence. Although the civil and criminal rules often mirror each other, one monumental change is in the new version of Rule 503. This new version significantly alters the analysis used in a corporate context and determines …

Lies And Law, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Mcdade Amendment: Moving Towards A Meaningful Limitation On Wrongful Prosecutorial Contact With Represented Parties, Nina Marino, Richard Kaplan

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

In Part I, this article will examine the anti-contact rule, its history, goals, and the path it has taken in the context of prosecutorial contact with represented parties. Part II will discuss the McDade Amendment, its genesis and purpose. Part III will discuss the struggle undertaken by the Department of Justice [hereinafter "DOJ"] as it seeks to exempt its lawyers from the anti-contact rule. Finally, Part IV looks at arguments for and against prosecutorial exemption from the anti-contact rule.

1998 Survey Of Ethics In Land-Use Planning, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

State Regulation Of Federal Prosecutors: The Impact On Contact With Represented Persons In Virginia, Robert H. Burger

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The first section of this paper analyzes the ethics rule promulgated by the Department of Justice. The DOJ rule governs those circumstances in which federal prosecutors may communicate with individuals known to be represented by counsel, without the consent of such counsel. The second and third sections of this paper discuss the judicial and statutory rejection of the DOJ rule respectively. First, in O'Keefe v. McDonnell Douglas," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reasoned that the DOJ lacked authority to promulgate their ethics rule. As a result of this conclusion, the Eighth Circuit held the DOJ rule …

Limiting Secret Settlements By Law, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I'm in the most embarrassing, impossible situation for a commentator- namely, agreeing fundamentally with what the principal speaker said. In fact, I wrote an article against secret settlements in the GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL in 1995. If Monroe Freedman were here, he would explain to us that progress in ideas comes from contention and the testing of hypotheses by marshalling the strongest arguments against them. Since he's not, I will nevertheless take that as my charge. Despite the fact that I agree with Richard on the ethical drawbacks of secret settlements, I'd like to begin by talking about what I think …

Ethics And Professionalism In Non-Adversarial Lawyering, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Traditional notions and rules of professionalism in the legal profession have been premised on particular conceptions of the lawyer's role, usually as an advocate, occasionally as a counselor, advisor, transaction planner, government official, decision maker and in the recent parlance of one of this symposium's participants-a "statesman [sic]. '" As we examine what professionalism means and what rules should be used to regulate its activity, it is important to ask some foundational questions: For what ends should our profession be used? What does law offer society? How should lawyers exercise their particular skills and competencies?

Taking Problem Solving Pedagogy Seriously: A Response To The Attorney General, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Attorney General Janet Reno has taken seriously the notion that lawyers should make the world better than they find it, that problems should be prevented, where possible, before they occur, and that law should serve the needs of the people and deliver long-term justice. I want to suggest some concrete ways in which we can take her challenges seriously.

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 …

The Constitution And Reconstitution Of The Standing Doctrine Comment., Laveta Casdorph

St. Mary's Law Journal

The most effective response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s construction of Article III standards will be to revise citizen suit statutes to reaffirm its important role in giving the injured citizen a voice against the administrative state. With the rise of the administrative state in the late 1930s and 40s, the Court developed a conservative doctrine of standing to protect New Deal legislation from court-based attacks. As individual constitutional rights expanded, standing rules were liberalized, allowing litigants to challenge the actions and decisions of administrative agencies more easily. Congress passed numerous environmental statutes containing “citizen suit” provisions in the 1960s …

Keeping The Promise: Establishing Nontransferable Election Systems In Jurisdictions Covered By Section Four Of The Voting Rights Act., Adam J. Cohen

St. Mary's Law Journal

Jurisdictions covered by the Voting Rights Act (VRA or the Act) need to impose multimember districting and non-transferable election systems. The VRA was enacted in 1965 to enforce the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: the right to vote shall not be abridged on the basis of race. The Act requires any change in election procedures to be approved in advance so that states are not able to continuously disenfranchise voters based on race by simply changing election procedures. Either the District Court for the District of Columbia or the Attorney General of the United States …

Corporate-Family Conflicts, Charles W. Wolfram

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Leak And The Craft: A Hard Line Proposal To Stop Unaccountable Disclosures Of Law Enforcement Information, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

The critics of Kenneth W. Starr accused him, in the five-plus years that he served as the multi-tasked Independent Counsel, of many failings, mistakes, and improprieties. One of the most prevalent charges was one that has significance to lawyers and resonates with the general public's sense of bad behavior by prosecutors: the allegation that Starr and/or members of his staff "leaked" information. This general accusation was, of course, imprecise. It also might have been overbroad. Prosecutorial "leaks" include such plain illegalities as disclosing grand jury information to the media or other unauthorized persons, and also the much less regulated practice …

Legal Ethics And A Civil Action, Kevin E. Mohr

Seattle University Law Review

This Article shows how A Civil Action can be used to supplement a course in Professional Responsibility. A Civil Action contains many events that can similarly be used to introduce students to ethical dilemmas they will confront when they enter the profession. These events can breathe life into otherwise dry discussions of acceptable ethical behavior as set out in ethical codes. In accord with the Lessons from Woburn Project's goal to make A Civil Action and its associated materials into a powerful teaching tool, the book's events vividly illustrate the ethical parameters within which a lawyer must operate, ethical parameters …

Towering Figures, Enigmas, And Responsive Communities In American Legal Ethics, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The first thing Niebuhr and Guttman are telling us to do is to look around and figure out what is going on around us. With that in mind, it has seemed to me that, at the simplest, a lawyer (or a journalist) functions in at least four communities, any one of which might be a community to talk about lawyers' moral questions in.

My inquiry, then, is an inquiry in communitarian legal ethics, using a Guttman-Niebuhr focus on responsibility. I infer a further question about communities of moral discernment—that is, not only where a modern lawyer is responsible but also …

Prosecutorial Misconduct In Closing Argument: The Role Of Intent In Appellate Review, Paul J. Spiegelman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

This article is the first of two articles that discuss the concern of prosecutorial misconduct. This article focuses improper prosecutorial argument in the 1990s. The article examines a California Supreme Court reversal of a murder conviction and death sentence due to misconduct during the prosecutor’s closing argument. The article then discusses forty-five federal appellate court opinions addressing the issue of prosecutorial misconduct.

Evidence And Ethics—Letting The Client Rest In Peace: Attorney-Client Privilege Survives The Death Of The Client. Swidler & Berlin V. United States, 118 S. Ct. 2081 (1998)., Julie Peters Zamacona

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyer Disclosure To Prevent Death Or Bodily Injury: A New Look At Spaulding V. Zimmerman, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Professional And The Liar, Richard H. Underwood

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Attorney-Client Privilege: Does It Really Have Life Everlasting?, Richard C. Wydick

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fixing Rule 1.6: The Montreal Formulation Makes It Work, Melissa Bartlett

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Minnesota V. Philip Morris, Inc.: An Important Legal Ethics Message Which Neglects The Public Interest In Product Safety Research, Edward J. Imwinkelried, James R. Mccall

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Should Kentucky Impose An Enforceable Duty On Lawyers To Report Other Lawyers' Professional Misconduct?, Parker D. Eastin

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ethics 2000 And Insurance Defense Conflicts Of Interest In Kentucky, Craig Paulus

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

What Is The Common Good, And Why Does It Concern The Client's Lawyer?, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Why is anything of real concern to any of us? Because, besides our simply emotional motives, we have reasons for action (which may be supported or opposed by our emotions). What are reasons for action? Some are instrumental, means to further ends: I have reason to start reading this paper to you, and you had reason to come back into the room to hear it. What reasons? Well, doing so is my contribution to this symposium's reflection on its subject-matter. That reflection, in turn, is intended to be instrumental in promoting a wider and deeper understanding of an important set …