Practical Wisdom in Legal Practice: Arguments For and Against a Virtue-Ethics Approach to Legal Ethics

Abstract

In the field of theoretical legal ethics, virtue ethics carries considerably less weight than either consequentialism or Kantian ethics. This is despite the fact that neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy informed a few notable contributors to the early legal-ethics discourse in the United States, notably Thomas Shaffer and Anthony Kronman. Nevertheless, the work of Shaffer and Kronman never fully aligned with the dominant currents of American legal-ethics scholarship. U.S. theorists generally preferred normative models supported by universalist justifications, and arguments centered on the moral character of the lawyer attracted limited interest. By contrast, in the Australasian context, the turn of the millennium witnessed particularly vibrant debate concerning the significance of character and the virtues within legal ethics. This study provides insight into this discourse through an analysis of the virtue-ethics framework developed by Australian scholars Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking, alongside the standard-conception-based legal ethics advanced by New Zealander Tim Dare. The comparison of these divergent theoretical positions highlights competing arguments for and against the incorporation of the Aristotelian approach into legal practice. The significance of this topic is reinforced by recent trends in legal-ethics scholarship.