A Modern Legal Ethics

Zusatztext "In this complex and thought-provoking work, Markovits makes an original and substantial contribution to the field of professional legal ethics." ---Tim Murphy, International Journal of Law in Context Informationen zum Autor Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Klappentext A Modern Legal Ethics proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. Daniel Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients' claims. Next, the book asks what it is like--not psychologically but ethically--to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Fidelity requires lawyers to lie and to cheat on behalf of their clients. However, an ethically profound interest in integrity gives lawyers reason to resist this characterization of their conduct. Any legal ethics adequate to the complexity of lawyers' lived experience must address the moral dilemmas immanent in this tension. The dominant approaches to legal ethics cannot. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers' central place in political practice. Lawyerly fidelity supports the authority of adjudication and thus the broader project of political legitimacy. Throughout, the book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favor of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas. Moreover, because lawyers practice at the hinge of modern morals and politics, the book's interpretive insights identify--in an unusually pure and intense form--the moral and political conditions of all modernity. Zusammenfassung Proposes a renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. This title reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. It asks what it is like - not psychologically but ethically - to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands....

Autorentext

Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Klappentext

A Modern Legal Ethics proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. Daniel Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients' claims. Next, the book asks what it is like--not psychologically but ethically--to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Fidelity requires lawyers to lie and to cheat on behalf of their clients. However, an ethically profound interest in integrity gives lawyers reason to resist this characterization of their conduct. Any legal ethics adequate to the complexity of lawyers' lived experience must address the moral dilemmas immanent in this tension. The dominant approaches to legal ethics cannot. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers' central place in political practice. Lawyerly fidelity supports the authority of adjudication and thus the broader project of political legitimacy. Throughout, the book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favor of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas. Moreover, because lawyers practice at the hinge of modern morals and politics, the book's interpretive insights identify--in an unusually pure and intense form--the moral and political conditions of all modernity.

Zusammenfassung
Proposes a renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. This title reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. It asks what it is like - not psychologically but ethically - to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I Adversary Advocacy Chapter 1: The Wellsprings of Legal Ethics 25 Chapter 2: The Lawyerly Vices 44 Chapter 3: The Seeds of a Lawyerly Virtue 79 Part II Integrity Chapter 4: Introducing Integrity 103 Chapter 5: An Impartialist Rejoinder? 118 Chapter 6: Integrity and the First Person 134 Part III Comedy or Tragedy? Chapter 7: Integration through Role 155 Chapter 8: Lawyerly Fidelity and Political Legitimacy 171 Chapter 9: Tragic Villains 212 Postscript 247 Notes 255