Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Roberta Karmel And The "Brooklyn School", Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In this contribution, Professor Janger describes Roberta Karmel’s extraordinary contributions to the intellectual, scholarly, and institutional life of Brooklyn Law School.

Karmel’S Dissent: The Sec’S Use And Occasional Misuse Of Section 21(A) Reports Of Investigation, James J. Park

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act gives the SEC the option of publishing a report of its findings after conducting an investigation. Typically, the SEC issues such reports about once a year to highlight major compliance and enforcement issues. This Article examines the SEC’s use of Section 21(a) investigative reports with special attention to its 1979 report in Spartek, where Commissioner Roberta Karmel filed a famous dissent. In that opinion, she argued that the report effectively sanctioned conduct over which the SEC did not have jurisdiction and that Spartek did not have sufficient notice of its regulatory obligations. While …

“The Eu Challenge To The Sec”: A View From 2021, Howell E. Jackson

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This essay offers a retrospective appreciation of Professor Roberta Karmel’s scholarship exploring the influence of securities regulation in the United States on developments in European capital markets regulation in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Professor Karmel’s writings document a fascinating evolution in this trans-Atlantic relationship as the Securities and Exchange Commission transitioned from the world’s dominant capital market regulator throughout most of the post-World War II era into a more collaborative posture by the end of the first decade of the Millennium. The essay concludes by suggesting that the trends that Professor Karmel chronicled in her scholarship have persisted …

The Importance Of Ethics In The Practice Of Mediation, Dorcas Quek Anderson

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

What is the predominant function of ethics for the mediation profession in Singapore? Do ethical principles assume greater significance in light of increasing institutionalisation of mediation programmes in Singapore? What can mediators, mediation advocates and mediation institutions do to ensure consistent adherence to ethical standards? These and other related issues were discussed in a webinar organised by the Singapore Academy of Law in May 2021 featuring Lim Tat, Chuan Wee Meng and this author as panellists, together with See Chern Yang as moderator. This article highlights the notable discussion points of the webinar, including the significance of mediation ethics, common …

Free Justice: A History Of The Public Defender In Twentieth-Century America, Kate Levine

Articles

Levine reviews Free justice: A history of the public defender in twentieth-century America. By Sara Mayeux. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 286 pp. $26.95 paperback.

Title 42, Asylum, And Politicising Public Health, Michael Ulrich, Sondra S. Crosby

Faculty Scholarship

President Biden has continued the controversial immigration policy of the Trump era known as Title 42, which has caused harm and suffering to scores of asylum seekers under the guise of public health.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered the policy in March 2020 with the stated purpose of limiting the spread of the coronavirus into the U.S.; though, CDC and public health officials have admitted this policy has no scientific basis and there is no evidence it has protected the public.2,3 Instead, the impetus behind the policy appears to be a desire to keep out or …

The Covid-19 Pandemic, Diversity And Inclusion, And The Practice Of Law, Jacob Burns Center For Ethics In The Practice Of Law

2021 Event Invitations

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed preexisting weaknesses in many areas of life and the law. In April 2021, the ABA published a study entitled Practicing Law in the Pandemic and Moving Forward: Results and Best Practices From a Nationwide Survey of The Legal Profession. The results of this study confirmed what many women and people of color already knew – standard approaches to the workplace do not serve goals of diversity and inclusion, especially during times of great stress and financial uncertainty.

On November 8th, the Burns Center will host the authors of this study and JoAnne Epps, Senior …

A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: Gpt-3 And The Practice Of Law, Amy B. Cyphert

Law Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence tools can now “write” in such a sophisticated manner that they fool people into believing that a human wrote the text. None are better at writing than GPT-3, released in 2020 for beta testing and coming to commercial markets in 2021. GPT-3 was trained on a massive dataset that included scrapes of language from sources ranging from the NYTimes to Reddit boards. And so, it comes as no surprise that researchers have already documented incidences of bias where GPT-3 spews toxic language. But because GPT-3 is so good at “writing,” and can be easily trained to write in …

On Time, (In)Equality, And Death, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, American institutions have inadvertently encountered the bodies of former slaves with increasing frequency. Pledges of respect are common features of these discoveries, accompanied by cultural debates about what “respect” means. Often embedded in these debates is an intuition that there is something special about respecting the dead bodies, burial sites, and images of victims of mass, systemic horrors. This Article employs legal doctrine, philosophical insights, and American history to both interrogate and anchor this intuition.

Law can inform these debates because we regularly turn to legal settings to resolve disputes about the dead. Yet the passage of …

Case Study: The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia’S Court Transcripts In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian—Part 1: Needs, Feasibility, And Output Assessment, Besmir Fidahić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remains the most important organization for the past, the present, and the future of the former Yugoslavia. Faced with a country that always lived under totalitarian regimes with very little insight into actions of the groups and individuals who reaped unthinkable havoc on each other at the end of the twentieth century, the ICTY set undisputable historical record about events that took place during the 1991–1999 wars and put the country on an excellent track towards transformation for the better. But even 28 years since the establishment of the ICTY, the former …

Negative Commentary—Negative Consequences: Legal Ethics, Social Media, And The Impact Of Explosive Commentary, Jan L. Jacobowitz Ms.

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Connecting and sharing on social media has opened communication channels and provided instantaneous information to billions of people worldwide. Commentary on current events, cases, and negative online reviews may be posted in an instant, often without pause or thought about the potential repercussions. This global phenomenon may not only provide news of the day updates, humor, and support for those in need but also is replete with ethical landmines for the unwary lawyer. Lawyers commenting on current events, their cases, or responding to a client’s negative online review, have suffered damage to their careers. In some instances, they have even …

The Informed Consent Doctrine In Legal Malpractice Law, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The doctrine of informed consent is now deeply embedded into the law of legal ethics. In legal malpractice litigation, the doctrine holds that a lawyer has a duty to disclose to a client material information about the risks and alternatives associated with a course of action. A lawyer who fails to make such required disclosures and fails to obtain informed consent is negligent, regardless of whether the lawyer otherwise exercises care in representing a client. If such negligent nondisclosures cause damages, the lawyer can be held accountable for the client’s losses.

Shifting the focus of a legal malpractice action from …

Ethical Duty To Investigate Your Client?, Peter A. Joy

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Lawyers have been implicated in corporate scandals and other client crimes or frauds all too often, and the complicity of some lawyers is troubling both to the public and to members of the legal profession. This is especially true when the crime involved is money laundering. As a response to attorney involvement in crimes or frauds, some legal commentators have called for changes to the ethics rules to require lawyers to investigate their clients and client transactions under some circumstances rather than remaining “consciously” or “willfully” blind to what may be illegal or fraudulent conduct. The commentators argue that such …

Sufficiently Judicial: The Need For A Universal Ethics Rule On Attorney Behavior In Legislative Impeachment Trials, Joshua E. Kastenberg

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In assessing an ethics, rule-based prohibition against New Jersey governmental attorneys representing clients against the state for matters the state had previously assigned to them, the state supreme court noted: “In our representative form of government, it is essential that the conduct of public officials and employees shall hold the respect and confidence of the people.”

In the beginning of 2020, the United States Senate held an impeachment trial to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump had committed offenses forwarded by the House of Representatives. A U.S. Senate trial, much like state senate trials, is both judicial and political …

Professional Responsibility, Legal Malpractice, Cybersecurity, And Cyber-Insurance In The Covid-19 Era, Ethan S. Burger

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, law firms conformed their activities to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and state health authority guidelines by immediately reducing the size of gatherings, encouraging social distancing, and mandating the use of protective gear. These changes necessitated the expansion of law firm remote operations, made possible by the increased adoption of technological tools to coordinate workflow and administrative tasks, communicate with clients, and engage with judicial and governmental bodies.

Law firms’ increased use of these technological tools for carrying out legal and administrative activities has implications …

Model Rule 8.4(G) And The Profession’S Core Values Problem, Michael Ariens

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Model Rule 8.4(g) declares it misconduct for a lawyer to “engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” The American Bar Association (ABA) adopted the rule in 2016 in large part to effectuate the third of its four mission goals: Eliminate Bias and Enhance Diversity. The ABA adopted these goals in 2008, and they continue to serve as ABA’s statement of its mission.

A …

Book Review: Public Legal Education - The Role Of Law Schools In Building A More Legally Literate Society (Routledge 2021), Amy Wallace

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Corporate Law's Forgotten Constituents: Reimagining Corporate Lawyering In Routine Business Contexts, Melissa E. Romanovich

Fordham Law Review

Although they are artificial entities, corporations are operated, managed, and represented by people. Sometimes, these people have personal interests at stake—interests that are separate and distinct from the corporation’s interests and that arise from these people acting in their corporate roles. These personal interests and related potential liabilities range from employment concerns and civil liability to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. Until now, however, the law has determined that, in most situations, a corporation’s lawyer neither represents the corporation’s constituents nor their personal interests. The corporate lawyer, therefore, has the challenging role of discharging the proper ethical and legal obligations to …

Inspectors General And The Law Of Oversight Independence, Andrew Brunsden

Articles & Chapters

President Trump's defiance of basic norms threatened the oversight institutions of American democracy. His brazen assault on the prosecutorial and investigative independence of federal law enforcement was well documented. Yet few have thoroughly scrutinized his violations of the oversight independence of internal institutions that monitor the government to promote integrity, transparency, and accountability. This Article examines the independence of Inspectors General (IGs), the internal watchdogs of the Executive Branch, and the President's attacks on the institution. President Trump breached long-standing independence norms when he fired or replaced IGs in retaliation for their legitimate exercise of oversight duties. Then, in some …

Racism As A Human Rights Risk: Reconsidering The Corporate 'Responsibility To Respect' Rights, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

Darnella Frazer, a teenage witness to a fatal police encounter, used social media to share her cell phone video footage capturing a white police officer casually kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed Black man named George Floyd for nearly nine minutes. Her video rapidly went viral, sparking civil unrest across the United States (US) and protests around the world.¹ Independent experts of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council came together to issue a joint statement condemning 'systemic racism' and 'state sponsored racial violence' in the US.² George Floyd was not the first unarmed …

The Debate Over Disclosure In Third-Party Litigation Finance: Balancing The Need For Transparency With Efficiency, Alec J. Manfre

Brooklyn Law Review

The market for third-party litigation financing (TPLF) in the United States is facing unprecedented growth and popularity. The ever-increasing complexity and cost of legal disputes, especially in the commercial context, has made third-party financing an invaluable resource for both litigants in need of capital and investors seeking to diversify their portfolios with nontraditional assets. However, as the market continues to boom, so does the risk that TPLF will be used unethically. Critics of the industry are calling on regulators at both the state and federal levels to implement comprehensive disclosure requirements for TPLF at the outset of all civil litigation …

Ethical Dilemma: Police Access To Private Internet Data An Analysis Of The Ecpa Of 1986, Its Effects On The St. Louis Area, And The Proposed Solutions To Remedy This Outdated Document., Amber Essary

Undergraduate Research Symposium

My research was focused on the ethical dilemma of police access to private internet data and how it pertains to the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986. This work contains a case study of serial killer Maury Travis, an overview of the history of the ECPA, an argument for why police should have access to private data, an ethical analysis of the two solutions to this dilemma, and an argument for what solution I believe to be the best one. My research concluded that the two possible solutions to this dilemma were to revise the ECPA or to …

Ending Injustice: Solving The Initial Appearance Crisis, Pamela R. Metzger, Janet C. Hoeffel, Kristin Meeks, Sandra Sidi

Deason Center Reports

Most Americans expect that if they are arrested, they will quickly appear before a judge, learn about the charges, and have an attorney assigned to defend them. The reality is vastly different. After arrest, a person can wait in jail for days, weeks, or even months before seeing a judge or meeting an attorney. This report chronicles the resulting initial appearance crisis and highlights its devastating consequences. More importantly, it provides policymakers and advocates with actionable recommendations.

Wandering With Artificial Intelligence And Its Obscure Legal Liability, Muhammad Pasha Nur Fauzan, Darian Amarta, Evan Tobias, Vikri Ricardo, Melania Fidela G.

Indonesia Law Review

The high level of autonomy of AI will raise the problem of legal liability at some point in the future. If AI’s behaviour causes an illegal consequence, who to held liable? This article will explore the problem concerning legal liability of AI into two main discussion. The first discussion will explore the possibility of imposing legal liability of AI to human. This part will discuss various available option to solve the AI liability problem by imposing legal liability on either users or manufacturers. While the second discussion will explore the possibility of imposing legal liability of AI to AI itself. …

"I Wish There Was A Treaty We Could Sign": An Inquiry Into The Making Of The Global Pact For The Environment, Marie-Catherine Petersmann

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article provides ethnographic insights into the making of the latest UN-backed instrument for transnational environmental law and governance: the Global Pact for the Environment (GPE). It narrates the rise and fall of a contemporary policy project designed to unify and strengthen international environmental law. The story starts in 2015 on the premises of a Parisian legal think tank and ends in May 2019 at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, where states ultimately decided not to adopt the GPE as a legally binding instrument but opted to prepare apolitical declaration to be presented in 2022 …

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add to a critical theory of migration. In this paper, I argue that, although its contribution to a critical theory of migration is limited, it nonetheless carves out a unique body …

Sword And Shield: The Georgia Supreme Court Adopts Third-Party Waiver Of Attorney-Client Privilege, D. Garrett White

Mercer Law Review

The attorney-client privilege is generally held out as a sacred instrument (a shield) reserved for clients and used by attorneys for the benefit of those clients. Persons untrained in the law tend to have a basic understanding of what the attorney-client privilege is and can often explain in a rudimentary sense what it protects. What few non-lawyers realize, however, is that the privilege is not absolute, and is waivable under certain, limited, circumstances. Now, it seems that shield is losing its integrity in the realm of legal malpractice.

In January 2020, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in Hill, Kertscher & …

Federalism In The Algorithmic Age, Chad Squitieri

Duke Law & Technology Review

No abstract provided.

Frivolous Defenses, Thomas D. Russell

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article is about civil procedure, torts, insurance, litigation, and professional ethics. The Article is the opening article in a conversation with Stanford Law Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, who has written about the plaintiffs’ bar and settlement mill attorneys. The empirical center of this piece examines 356 answers to 298 car crash personal injury cases in Colorado’s district courts. The Article situates these cases within dispute pyramid elements, including the total number of miles-traveled within Colorado and the volume of civil litigation. The Article then analyzes the defense attorneys’ departures from the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure, especially Rule 8. …

Legal Lying?, Robert Angyal, Nicholas Saady

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Mediation has become very common in the USA and Australia—at least partly because of court-mandated mediation initiatives. Lawyers often represent clients at mediations, so the increased use of mediation makes it important to understand how both jurisdictions regulate lawyers’ advocacy on behalf of their clients during mediation. This article comparatively analyzes how professional standards regulate the truthfulness of lawyers’ advocacy during mediation in Australia and the United States. It focuses on uniform regulation in those jurisdictions. Part One will comparatively analyze the relevant regulations in Australia and the United States, and the types of obligations contained in those regulations—for example, …