ABSTRACT

This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal ‘law on lawyering’. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this collection offers not just critical insights into the authors’ chosen texts, but a thought-provoking commentary on the current state of legal ethics scholarship and its future directions. In addition to being an essential resource for scholars and students of legal ethics theory, it will also be of interest to academics and researchers in legal theory, the philosophy of law, and applied ethics.

chapter 1|23 pages

Introduction

Surfing the waves of legal ethics scholarship

part I|128 pages

Philosophies revisited

chapter 3|23 pages

The Lost Lawyer regained

Virtue, liberalism and citizenship in lawyers' ethics

chapter 4|20 pages

Human dignity as the ground of legal ethics

The lawyer's role revisited, from Luban to Levinas

chapter 5|26 pages

Back to basics, and beyond belief

The radical re-valuation project of the New Standard Conception

chapter 6|22 pages

The fragility of legal ethics

On the role of theory, lawyerly virtues, and moral remainders in the life of a good lawyer

chapter 7|18 pages

Repentance

Did Atticus defend Jim Crow?

part II|118 pages

Diverse origins – new directions

chapter 9|22 pages

In search of public interest lawyering

What does it take to give practical content to better professional norms?

chapter 10|11 pages

Race matters

White dispatches from the professional front

chapter 11|19 pages

Revisiting Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority

An engaged followership perspective on legal ethics

chapter 12|26 pages

James Rest's four component model (FCM)

A case for its central place in legal ethics

chapter 13|19 pages

Not the end of lawyers, but a beginning

The place of entrepreneurship and innovation in legal ethics 1