Download Chapter 8 - Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach

Chapter 8
What is the Proper Role of the
Lawyer?
1-1
• The dominant conception of the lawyer's role:
• rejects role morality.
• endorses moral accountability.
• endorses moral nonaccountability.
• views a lawyer primarily as an officer of the court
.
1-2
• Role morality requires lawyers to take actions
that are immoral under ordinary morality.
• True
• False
What is the role morality of the
neutral partisan?
• Extreme Partisan
• Moral Non-accountability
1-3
• Which of the following is NOT a justification for the
• neutral partisan role?
• The adversary system.
• The traditional understanding of professionalism.
• Client autonomy.
• Democracy and access to law.
1-4
• The Preambles to the Canons and the Code
• emphasize the lawyer's responsibilities to his
or her client.
• True
• False
Canons
•
In America, where the stability of Courts and of all departments of government
•
rests upon the approval of the people, it is peculiarly essential that the system for
•
establishing and dispensing Justice be developed to a high point of efficiency and so
•
maintained that the public shall have absolute confidence in the integrity and impartiality
•
of its administration. The future of the Republic, to a great extent, depends upon our
•
maintenance of Justice pure and unsullied. It cannot be so maintained unless the conduct
•
and the motives of the members of our profession are such as to merit the approval of all
•
just men.
Code
•
In America, where the stability of Courts and of all departments of government
•
rests upon the approval of the people, it is peculiarly essential that the system for
•
establishing and dispensing Justice be developed to a high point of efficiency and so
•
maintained that the public shall have absolute confidence in the integrity and impartiality
•
of its administration. The future of the Republic, to a great extent, depends upon our
•
maintenance of Justice pure and unsullied. It cannot be so maintained unless the conduct
•
and the motives of the members of our profession are such as to merit the approval of all
•
just men.
Rules
[1] A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a
representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a
public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of
justice.
[6] As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of
the law, access to the legal system, the administration of
justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal
profession.
[13] Lawyers play a vital role in the preservation of society.
The fulfillment of this role requires an understanding by
lawyers of their relationship to our legal system. The Rules of
Professional Conduct, when properly applied, serve to define
that relationship.
1-5
• The original understanding of the lawyer's role
in the United States was that of the European
guild.
• True
• False
1-6
• The Rules:
• require lawyers to be amoral partisans.
• prohibit lawyers from being amoral partisans.
• permit lawyers discretion to choose whether to b
e morally responsible or a neutral partisan.
1-7
• The Tennessee ethics opinion advises a lawyer opposed to abortion
that his ethical obligations require him, in representing a
• minor seeking judicial consent for an abortion:
•
to suggest that she consider talking to her parents.
•
to suggest that she consider alternatives to abortion.
• to suggest that she consider the moral pros and cons of her
decision
•
none of the above.
1-8
• The Tennessee ethics opinion is consistent
• with Rule 2.1.
• True
• False
Rule 2.1
In representing a client, a lawyer shall exercise
independent professional judgment and render
candid advice. In rendering advice, a lawyer may
refer not only to law but to other considerations
such as moral, economic, social and political
factors, that may be relevant to the client's
situation.
1-9
• The Legal Profession as a Blue State reading argues that the
ascendance of the hired gun approach and the decline of
• lawyers’commitment to the public good results from:
• increasing businesslike behavior by lawyers
• law schools' disdain of law practice and legal ethics.
• the trend toward greater emphasis on individualism.
• the increasing diversity of the legal profession.
1-10
• The adversary system approach to justice resembles
• market theory in that it:
• rejects moral relativism.
• distributes justice equally.
• always favors the wealthy.
• assumes that facilitating the pursuit of individual selfinterest is best for society