"May a Good Lawyer be as well a Good Human?" The Prospects of Moral Ethics from the Point of view of Moral Philosophy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59558/jesz.2023.1.14Keywords:
law and morality, legal ethics, role morality, standard conception, lawyer-client relationshipAbstract
Scholarly discourse on the theoretical underpinnings of lawyer's professional ethics began in the US academic community in the 1970s. Its first decades, a period usually referred to as the first wave of theoretical legal ethics, were dominated by moral philosophical approaches. Theorists focused on the individual lawyer as a moral agent and addressed the principal question of how to reconcile the lawyer's professional role morality and ordinary or common morality, when they seemingly conflict. Is it possible to live a virtuous and respectable life while adhering to the traditional amoral role of the lawyer known as the standard conception? Questions like this divided legal ethicists into two groups: the critics of the standard conception and its defenders. This paper provides an insight into the decades-long debate between them, drawing on the relevant Anglo-Saxon legal literature. Part I clarifies the term "lawyer's role" as used in theoretical legal ethics; Part II introduces the key concepts of the field and the methodological approach characteristic of the first wave; Part III provides the historical background to the emergence of the legal ethics scholarship; Parts IV and V give an overview of the main arguments developed by the leading critics and defenders of the standard conception; finally, Part VI summarizes the results of the first wave of theoretical legal ethics and refers to the shift in perspective in the early 2000s that led to the second wave.