Alexa Van Brunt, of Northwestern, offers this op-ed at the Washington Post, arguing that lawyers currently are permitted to help clients do whatever they want and that we need to re-write the ethics rules.
In the legal context, this would require the creation of ethical principles that explicitly state that service to the client does not trump duty to the laws and Constitution, and that complicity in acts of torture and other such unlawful abuses would constitute a disciplinary offense—even if done on behalf of the president of the United States.
But don't the ethics rules already dictate that result? As lawyers do their lawyering, they have all sorts of explicit duties to non-clients and to the law. And on the few occasions when lawyers are ethically permitted to disobey legal requirements they must do so in a carefullly circumscribed way. The closest provision I can find to Van Brunt's characterization is the portion of 1.2(d) that draws a sometimes fine line between advising on legality (ok) and helping a client violate the law with impunity (not ok). The notion that lawyers may solely pursue the client's interests irrespective of the law is a straw man that just won't go away.