Co-blogger Alice Woolley poses that Jeopardy-like riddle in this article. The piece raises some of the same themes as Bill Simon's recent article (discussed last week), but with a notably different slant. Here's the abstract:
Philosophical
legal ethics, a sub-disicpline of legal ethics arguably initiated by
Charles Fried and Richard Wasserstrom, follows a consistent
methodological structure: First, what is the “standard conception” of
the lawyer’s role? Second, what is the relationship between the
standard conception – the conception of the lawyer as a partisan
advocate for her client, neutral about (and unaccountable for) the
morality of her client’s aims – and the claims of morality more
generally? And third, given that relationship, can what lawyers do be
morally justified? Or should what lawyers do be changed? The concerns
of philosophical legal ethics are not primarily doctrinal, analyze the
lawyer’s role with some generality, and are fundamentally rooted in
philosophy, moral or political.
This article uses two recent publications in the area of philosophical legal ethics - Daniel Markovits’ A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age and Tim Dare’s Counsel of Rogues? A Defense of the Standard Conception of the Lawyer’s Role - to argue that the straightforward rhetorical structure of philosophical legal ethics belies the difficulty inherent in analyzing something that necessarily incorporates both legality (doctrines of law) and ethics (the ability of a person to lead a well-lived life), particularly since both legal doctrine and a well-lived life also bear some relationship to the dictates of impartial morality, while yet remaining in some way distinct from impartial morality. Its seemingly straightforward structure also obscures the risk for philosophical legal ethics of drawing implications from ethics for law, or from law for ethics, even where those implications may be unwarranted or actively problematic.
This article uses two recent publications in the area of philosophical legal ethics - Daniel Markovits’ A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age and Tim Dare’s Counsel of Rogues? A Defense of the Standard Conception of the Lawyer’s Role - to argue that the straightforward rhetorical structure of philosophical legal ethics belies the difficulty inherent in analyzing something that necessarily incorporates both legality (doctrines of law) and ethics (the ability of a person to lead a well-lived life), particularly since both legal doctrine and a well-lived life also bear some relationship to the dictates of impartial morality, while yet remaining in some way distinct from impartial morality. Its seemingly straightforward structure also obscures the risk for philosophical legal ethics of drawing implications from ethics for law, or from law for ethics, even where those implications may be unwarranted or actively problematic.
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