Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

The Prosecutorial Ethic: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Maureen Howard

Articles

Although the American trial system has been likened to an arena in which mental combatants fight “to the death ” (the verdict ), each warrior similarly skilled and equally committed to vanquishing the other in a forum with formal rules of engagement enforced by a learned and impartial judge, the role of the criminal prosecutor is qualitatively different from that of other advocates. This is because, unlike any other lawyer, a criminal prosecutor has an affirmative duty to the opposing party.

Matthew S. Weinert On Hegel’S Laws: The Legitimacy Of A Modern Legal Order. By William E. Conklin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 381pp., Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Hegel’s Laws: The Legitimacy of a Modern Legal Order. By William E. Conklin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 381pp.

Mapping The World: Facts And Meaning In Adjudication And Mediation, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores what is and what is not in adjudication and mediation, thus illuminating the profound differences between these two processes. The Article does this work in four parts. First, it offers an analysis of cognitive mapmaking and its inevitability in constructing meaning. It then explores how adjudication defines meaning in a particular way. This Article then conducts a comparable analysis of mediation. Finally, it focuses on the bridging function attorneys play between the worlds of mediation and adjudication.

Giving Unconscionability More Muscle: Attorney's Fees As A Remedy For Contractual Overreaching, Stephen E. Friedman

Georgia Law Review

This Article seeks to broaden the conversation about unconscionability. While most of the discussion has focused on the appropriate standard for determining unconscionability, this Article focuses on the appropriate remedy to be imposed when unconscionability is found. The current remedy for unconscionability is nonenforcement or limited enforcement of unconscionable contracts or contract terms. This remedy is inadequate and seriously undermines unconscionability's effectiveness as a tool for policing against contractual overreaching. The Article proposes that courts be given discretion to award attorney's fees to consumers who successfully establish the unconscionability of a standard form contract. Such a remedy would enable unconscionability …

Foreword, Lonnie T. Brown, Jr.

Georgia Law Review

In all types of law practice, attorneys are routinely called upon to make difficult ethical judgment calls. The ethical line-drawing that often takes place in the context of controversial or high-profile cases, however, can be uniquely challenging. Indeed, the very decision to undertake a representation of this nature is fraught with ethical and pragmatic concerns uncommon to typical legal matters. Usually, in assessing whether or not to accept representation of a client, lawyers must address such issues as competency, conflicts of interest, and fee structure. The character of these preliminary inquiries changes rather dramatically, though, when the prospective client is …

"How Can You Represent That Man?": Ethics, The Rule Of Law, And Defending The Indefensible, Ramsey Clark

Georgia Law Review

As we meet to discuss legal ethics, we should consider whether the subject as it is usually presented today adequately encompasses the ideal role of the lawyer, beyond zealous advocacy on behalf of clients. For the most part, legal ethics today, through codes of professional conduct, deals with prohibitions intended to protect the public from misconduct by lawyers, oftentimes criminal. Thou shalt not steal, conceal, lie, bear false witness, suborn perjury, or breach client trust. But is this all? Doesn't ethics promise more than this? Ethics-like morality, which has richer connotations in our culture-properly deals not only with what is …

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 …

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 …

The Supreme Court's Increased Attention To The Law Of Lawyering: Mere Coincidence Or Something More? , Renee Newman Knake

American University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court considered seventeen cases raising issues related to the role of attorneys and the practice of law during the 2009 Term. This body of cases represents a substantial departure from dockets in recent history, where typically the Court took up less than a handful of cases involving regulation of the legal profession. While some might consider the increased number of cases addressing the law of lawyering a mere coincidence, this article contends that something more is occurring. The Court’s decision to devote so much of its limited time to these matters is noteworthy not only for …

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 …

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 …

No Protectable Property Interest In Making Land Use Decisions And Other Ethics In Land Use Issues 2009-2010, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This annual review of reported decisions and opinions focused on ethical considerations in land use planning and decision-making, continues to highlight the hotly litigated issues surrounding conflicts of interest of various players in the land use game.

Relationships, The Rules Of Professional Conduct And Land Use: Ethical Quagmires For Land Use Attorneys, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article begins to fill the void by introducing the application of the various Rules of Professional Conduct, as adopted by the specific opining jurisdiction, through a review of the relevant reported opinions of the various committees and sometimes courts, in the land use context. Part I discusses the challenges that arise for lawyers vis-à-vis their clients in the land use context. This is followed by a discussion in Part II of the ethics and professionalism issues that confront lawyers who serve on local boards.

Sports And Entertainment Agents And Agent-Attorneys: Discourses And Conventions Concerning Crossing Jurisdictional And Professional Borders, David S. Caudill

Faculty Publications

Questions regarding the ethical obligations, pitfalls, and dilemmas facing attorneys who become sports or entertainment agents are not new. However, despite a substantial discourse on the topic, the sense persists that being both a lawyer and an agent is problematic. The applicable laws, including ethical regulations, seem to be clear, but are subject not only to law‟s usual jurisdictional variations and interpretive instability, but also to the mediation of conventions or tacit understandings that pervade the sports and entertainment industries.

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transnational Legal Practice 2009, Carole Silver, Laurel S. Terry, Ellyn S. Rosen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article identifies some of the most important U.S. and international developments in transnational legal practice and provides citations for further research. The article begins by briefly reviewing the impact of the recession on legal services. The second section focuses on international developments. It identifies some of the ongoing efforts to implement the 2007 U.K. Legal Services Act, including the issuance of the influential Hunt and Smedley reports. It also provides information about law reform initiatives in France, Scotland and Korea. This section of the article also provides information about Canadian and Australian developments regarding admission of foreign applicants and …