Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

The Conference Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Foreword, Samuel J. Levine

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can A Christian Be A Lawyer Or Can Both God And Jackson Browne Be Right, Randy Lee

Touro Law Review

Jesus’s final command at His final meal before His death was to “love one another.” No less than Jackson Browne insisted that the ultimate absurdity in an absurd world is a “lawyer in love.” Thus, Jesus has commanded that even lawyers must love, but Jackson Browne has emphatically stressed that lawyers are incapable of love. Given the apparent conflict for lawyers between these two observations of Jesus and Jackson Browne, one might wonder whether one can be a Christian and a lawyer both. Can both God and Jackson Browne be right? Of course, the government could seemingly make the answer …

Reflections On The Creation Of The Jewish Law Institute At Touro, Randy Lee

Touro Law Review

Having interpreted the topic of our panel liberally, what I want to talk about today is why Sam Levine, director of Touro’s Jewish Law Institute, is here at the conference, or, to put it differently—why does Touro Law School have a Jewish law institute?”

Reaching Out Through The Universal: The Powerful And Positive Role Of A Jesuit Catholic Law School On The Secular Line, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Touro Law Review

There are multiple ways in which Catholic law schools can provide an education that supports and reflects a Catholic vision. Some schools align more closely to an orthodox view in which text and doctrine are the starting lens. Catholic law schools closer to the secular end of the spectrum play a powerful role by actively building bridges with the secular world. These schools, either implicitly or explicitly, start with values framed in more universal terms -- a moral or ethical worldview that can implement the common good in the secular world. A Catholic law school that emphasizes the universal generally …

Rage Against The Machine: Who Is Responsible For Regulating Generative Artificial Intelligence In Domestic And Cross-Border Litigation?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

In 2023, ChatGPT—an early form of generative artificial intelligence (AI) capable of creating entirely new content—took the world by storm. The first shock came when ChatGPT demonstrated its ability to pass the U.S. bar exam. Soon thereafter, the world learned that ChatGPT was being used by both lawyers and judges in actual litigation.

Some within the legal community find the use of generative AI in civil and criminal litigation entirely unproblematic. Others find generative AI troubling as a matter of due process and procedural fairness due to its propensity not only to misinterpret legitimate legal authorities but to create fictitious …

Ethical Lawyering: The Role Of Honor, Conscience, And Codes (Reviewing Michael S. Ariens, The Lawyer’S Conscience: A History Of American Lawyer Ethics), Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Michael Ariens’ new book, The Lawyer’s Conscience: A History of American Lawyer Ethics, is a monumental work, rooted in his decades of excellent scholarship in the fields of attorney professional responsibility and legal history. The Lawyer’s Conscience captures the great sweep and key features of the roughly 250-year period in American legal ethics running from colonial times to the present day. Richly detailed and vividly presented, the story takes the reader on a grand tour of the landmark events and changing ideas that have defined the aspirations, responsibilities, and accountability of members of the American legal profession.

Trauma-Informed Legal Advocacy, Laken Albrink

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A trauma-informed approach in legal practice can reduce the re-traumatization of victims, provide recognition of the role trauma plays in the attorney-client relationship, and provide legal professionals with the opportunity to increase connections to their clients and improve advocacy.1 Part Two of this article defines trauma and adverse childhood experiences and the impact they have on clients. It then explores indicators of trauma and how they may present case barriers if the attorney is not trauma informed. Part Three explores ways attorneys can tailor their practice of law to be trauma-informed with clients, support staff, and other professionals. It demonstrates …

Who Watches The Watchmen? Using The Law Governing Lawyers To Identify The Applicant Duty Gap And Hold Bar Examiner Gatekeepers Accountable, Ashley M. London

Law Faculty Publications

The legal profession holds lawyers to high standards in their personal and professional lives and expects aspiring members to follow the ethical rules with scrupulous precision and candor. Yet the profession, and those monitoring admission to the profession, afford no protections or recourse to this class of young professionals during that critical period between graduation and successful bar passage.

Without reform, this previously unacknowledged duty gap will continue to demoralize and potentially harm future lawyers and reflect negatively on the profession as a whole. Supervising bodies, discussed within, treat applicants as if they have already committed an ethical breach. Indeed, …

Judicial Ethics And Identity, Charles Gardner Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article seeks to untangle a cluster of controversies and conundrums at the epicenter of the judiciary’s role in American government, where a judge’s identity as a person and role as a judge intersect. Part I synthesizes the traditional ethics schema, which proceeds from the premise that good judges decide cases on the basis of facts and law, unsullied by the extralegal influences of identity that make judges who they are as human beings. Part II discusses the empirical evidence, and the extent to which identity influences judicial decision- making in ways that contradict tenets of the traditional schema. Part …

Ethics For Real Estate Lawyers Today, John G. Cameron Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay discusses various ethics issues that real estate lawyers experience: everything from new ABA Model Rule 8.4(g) (avoiding discrimination) to rules that apply when a lawyer works from home to technological competence and social media to the attorney-client privilege and to advance conflicts waivers. There is also a social science overlay that discusses why smart people do dumb things.

Nestlé V. Doe: A Death Knell To Corporate Human Rights Accountability?, Phillip Ayers

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe held that foreign plaintiffs who claimed to be victims of overseas tortious conduct by corporate defendants had no jurisdiction to sue in federal courts using the Alien Tort Statute. This Comment looks at the history of the Alien Tort Statute, from its inspiration, long dormancy, and recent reinvigoration beginning in the 1980s. The Comment then explores the background of Nestlé and its issues with child slavery in its cocoa supply chain. From there, the Comment analyzes the Nestlé v. Doe decision, and posits an alternative outcome. Finally, this Comment looks for a new …

A Critical Moral Dilemma Within Animal Law Impact Litigation, Kyla Dayton-Woods

Animal Law Review

Animals, as legal clients, deserve the same rights as people when being represented by attorneys. There is no Model Rule of Professional Conduct to guide attorneys on how to ethically represent their animal clients. This gap in the law demonstrates an uncertainty in how lawyers are meant to fulfill their moral and legal obligations for their animal clients. Using the Nonhuman Rights Project’s representation of two elephant clients, Beulah and Karen, as a test, this Article proposes a Model Rule to fill the moral gap. If this proposed rule was incorporated into the Model Rules, Beulah and Karen’s attorneys may …

Educating Judges & Advancing Inclusion: The Evolution Of Gendered Language In U.S. Courts, Sarah Mcconnell

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law License Reciprocity’S Discriminatory Exclusion Of Working Mothers, Sarah W. Keller

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jewish Ethics, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Essays on Jewish Ethics in:

Chapter 2 Introduction to Ethical Approaches in Data Science

Chapter 4 Machine Models in Court

A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy

Emory Law Journal

Since the child welfare system’s inception, abuse and neglect laws have conflated poverty-related neglect with active parental violence and willful neglect. The ensuing state surveillance has disproportionately harmed poor children and children of color. Pursuant to the state’s expansive parens patriae authority, countless families are investigated, and thousands of children are separated from their caretakers each year—only to be returned within days or weeks after a finding that the reasons for removal were unsubstantiated. Other children risk drifting in foster care limbo until they experience the termination of parental rights—an adjudication so severe that some courts call it the “civil …

Private Sanctions, Public Harm?, Jon J. Lee

Faculty Articles

The legal profession has a secret. In response to widespread public distrust in the profession’s ability to regulate itself, state disciplinary authorities have undertaken modest efforts over the last several decades to make their activities more transparent. They have opened up their formal proceedings, publicized the identities of sanctioned attorneys, and shared information about their work online. But at the same time, most have quietly continued to resolve cases of ostensibly “minor” and “isolated” misconduct through the use of private sanctions, keeping the identities of disciplined attorneys—and their misconduct—hidden from view. This Article provides the first comprehensive scholarly contribution on …

To Protect And Serve California's Children: Mitigating Police Coercion Of Minors Through California's New Attorney Consultation Mandate, Lila Garlinghouse

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Great Effacement: New Zealand's Silencing On The 2019 Mosque Shooter, J.C. Oleson

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contempt Power And The United States Courts, Joshua Carback

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

Contempt power is one of the most important legacies of English common law in federal common law. Substantively, the contempt power of the United States Courts is relatively similar to that employed by the Court of King’s Bench in the eighteenth century. Procedurally, however, it is quite different. The Rules Enabling Act of 1934 created an interbranch framework for crafting procedural rules for the United States Courts. All three branches of the federal government collaborated under that framework with the intention of rationalizing, systemizing, and delimiting the boundaries of contempt power. The culmination of decades of strenuous rulemaking, unfortunately, was …

Depoliticizing Federal Prosecution, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

There is broad agreement that federal prosecutors should not use their power to pursue partisan political objectives, but there is stark disagreement about how to prevent them from abusing their power in this way. Geoffrey Berman, a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, recently argued that U.S. Attorneys should have complete autonomy and independence from the Attorney General and administration. Attorney General Bill Barr, in contrast, has insisted that Attorneys General should have full control over prosecutors so the administration can be held politically accountable. Neither view fully addresses the problem. Barr minimizes the significant …

The Perverse Carrot: How Extreme Economic Precarity Is Exploited Through Witness Perks, Roxann Matthews

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence In Legal Advocacy, Elissa Germaine

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The use of AI in our personal and professional lives has entered the public consciousness over the past several months. The legal profession and the securities industry are no exception. This article begins to explore the use of open source generative AI in legal advocacy, and the related ethical implications for securities arbitration practitioners.

Studies have corroborated the impact of AI on the legal profession that many of us have been seeing in practice or hearing and reading about. A Goldman Sachs study predicted that the legal profession will be one of the most likely areas to be impacted …

Beyond The Toolbox: Values-Based Models Of Mediation Practice, Robert A. Baruch Bush

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Real Mediation Systems To Help Parties And Mediators Achieve Their Goals, John Lande

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality—the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …