Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Daniel Markovits
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9780691121628

ISBN 10:   0691121621
Pages:   376
Publication Date:   19 October 2008
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Replaced By:   9781400828982
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock  

Language:   English

Table of Contents

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 Index of Cases Cited 341 Index of Model Rules and Other Authorities 347 Index of Subjects 351

Reviews

In a refreshing break from the positivist battle over the moral function of lawyers in an adversary system of adjudication, A Modern Legal Ethics investigates whether it is even possible for lawyers to occupy an ethical role in modern society... This unique perspective on the legal profession is informed by a combination of legal literature and political philosophy that is sure to capture the attention of academics and practicing lawyers alike. Harvard Law Review

Author Information

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

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