Morality and the Nature of Law explores the conceptual relationship between morality and the criteria that determine what counts as law in a given societythe criteria of legal validity. Is it necessary condition for a legal system to include moral criteria of legal validity? Is it even possible for a legal system to have moral criteria of legal validity? The book considers the views of natural law theorists ranging from Blackstone to Dworkin and rejects them, arguing that it is not conceptually necessary that the criteria of legal validity include moral norms. Further, it rejects the exclusive positivist view, arguing instead that it is conceptually possible for the criteria of validity to include moral norms. In the process of considering such questions, this book considers Raz's views concerning the nature of authority and Shapiro's views about the guidance function of law, which have been thought to repudiate the conceptual possibility of moral criteria of legal validity. The book, then, articulates a thought experiment that shows that it is possible for a legal system to have such criteria and concludes with a chapter that argues that any legal system, like that of the United States, which affords final authority over the content of the law to judges who are fallible with respect to the requirements of morality is a legal system with purely source-based criteria of validity.

This book offers a comparative analysis of traditional Asian legal systems. It combines methods from legal history, legal anthropology, legal philosophy, and substantive law, pursuing a comprehensive approach that offers readers a broad perspective on the topic. The geographic regions covered include the Near East, Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. For each region, the book first provides historical and political context. Next, it discusses major milestones in the region's legal history and political institutions, as well as its forms of government. Readers are then presented with fundamental principles and terms needed to understand the legal arguments discussed. The book begins with the Ancient Near East and important topics such as Jewish law. The next part considers Islamic law, while also exploring modern issues. The third part focuses on Hindu and Buddhist law, while the fourth part covers China and Japan. The book's closing section examines tribal societies, e.g. Mongols, Pashtuns and Malays. Topics covered include the interaction of legal systems within a legal circle, inter-systemic interactions, reasons for the failure and success of legal modernization, legal pluralism, and its effects on Asian societies. Family law, law of obligation, criminal law, and procedural law are also explored.

The view that persons are entitled to respect because of their moral agency is commonplace in contemporary moral theory. What exactly this respect entails, however, is far less uncontroversial. In this book, Van der Rijt argues powerfully that this respect for persons' moral agency must also encompass respect for their subjective moral judgments - even when these judgments can be shown to be fundamentally flawed. Van der Rijt scrutinises the role persons' subjective moral judgments play within the context of coercion and domination. His fresh, original analysis of Kant's third formulation of the Categorical Imperative reveals how these judgments are intimately connected to a person's dignity. The result is an insightful new account of coercion, a novel Kantian reformulation of the republican notion of non-domination and a compelling, innovative argument in favour of retributive justice. "In this admirably clear and insightful work, Van der Rijt develops an original account of coercion and dignity. On the basis of his analysis of the relation between these two concepts, he also provides an intriguing new angle on the nature of republicanism. I recommend this book to anyone interested in freedom and power and their roles in normative political theory." Ian Carter - University of Pavia "In this carefully argued and original study Jan-Willem van der Rijt offers an analysis of coercion, a broadly Kantian argument that coercion is an affront to dignity, and an illuminating contrast with Philip Pettit's republicanism. A most welcome contribution." Thomas E. Hill, Jr. - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Jan-Willem van der Rijt has written a well argued, original book that will prove to be extremely helpful for the philosophical inquiry of the relationship between coercion and human dignity as well as for the assessment of republicanism and its consequences." Ralf Stoecker - University of Potsdam

This second volume of ReConFort, published open access, addresses the decisive role of constitutional normativity, and focuses on discourses concerning the legal role of constitutional norms. Taken together with ReConFort I (National Sovereignty), it calls for an innovative reassessment of constitutional history drawing on key categories to convey the legal nature of the constitution itself (national sovereignty, precedence, justiciability of power, judiciary as constituted power). In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, constitutional normativity began to complete the legal fixation of the entire political order. This juridification in one constitutional text resulted in a conceptual differentiation from ordinary law, which extends to alterability and justiciability. The early expressions of this 'new order of the ages' suggest an unprecedented and irremediable break with European legal tradition, be it with British colonial governance or the French ancien regime. In fact, while the shift to constitutions as a hierarchically 'higher' form of positive law was a revolutionary change, it also drew upon old liberties. The American constitutional discourse, which was itself heavily influenced by British common law, in turn served as an inspiration for a variety of constitutional experiments - from the French Revolution to Napoleon's downfall, in the halls of the Frankfurt Assembly, on the road to a unified Italy, and in the later theoretical discourse of twentieth-century Austria. If the constitution states the legal rules for the law-making process, then its Kelsian primacy is mandatory. Also included in this volume are the French originals and English translations of two vital documents. The first - Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes' Du Jury Constitutionnaire (1795) - highlights an early attempt to reconcile the democratic values of the French Revolution with the pragmatic need to legally protect the Revolution. The second - the 1812 draft of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland - presents the 'constitutional propaganda' of the Russian Tsar Alexander I to bargain for the support of the Lithuanian and Polish nobility. These documents open new avenues of research into Europe's constitutional history: one replete with diverse contexts and national experiences, but above all an overarching motif of constitutional decisiveness that served to complete the juridification of sovereignty. (www.reconfort.eu)

Ever since Harts The Concept of Law, legal philosophers agree that the practice of law-applying officials is a fundamental aspect of law. Yet there is a huge disagreement on the nature of this practice. Is it a conventional practice? Is it like the practice that takes place, more generally, when there is a social rule in a group? Does it share the nature of collective intentional action? The book explores the main responses to these questions, and claims that they fail on two main counts: current theories do not explain officials beliefs that they are under a duty qua members of an institution, and they do not explain officials disagreement about the content of these institutional duties. Based on a particular theory of collective action, the author elaborates then an account of certain institutions, and claims that the practice is an institutional practice of sorts. This would explain officials beliefs in institutional duties, and officials disagreement about those duties.

The book should be of interest to legal philosophers, but also to those concerned with group and social action theories and, more generally, with the nature of institutions."

The terrorist attacks occurred in the United States on 11 September 2001 have profoundly altered and reshaped the priorities of criminal justice systems around the world. Atrocities like the 9/11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings of March 2003, and the terrorist act to the United Kingdom of July 2005 threatened the life of democratic nations. The volume explores the response of democratic nation-states to the problems of terrorism and counter-terrorism within the framework of the Rule of Law. One of the primary subjects of study is the ways in which the interests of the state (security from external threats, the maintenance of civil peace, and the promotion of the commonwealth) are balanced or not with the liberty and freedom of the citizens of the state. The distinctive aspect of this focus is that it brings a historical, political, philosophical and comparative approach to the contemporary shape and purposes of the criminal justice systems around the world.

This collection surveys the literature relevant to law and anthropology. It also brings together attempts by western scholars to understand non-western forms of jurisprudence in their own terms, and illustrates diverse non-western approaches to law.

The law persists because people have reasons to comply with its rules. What characterizes those reasons is their interdependence: each of us only has a reason to comply because he or she expects the others to comply for the same reasons. The rules may help us to solve coordination problems, but the interaction patterns regulated by them also include Prisoner's Dilemma games, Division problems and Assurance problems. In these "games" the rules can only persist if people can be expected to be moved by considerations of fidelity and fairness, not only of prudence.
This book takes a fresh look at the perennial problems of legal philosophy - the source of obligation to obey the law, the nature of authority, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal argument - from the perspective of this conventionalist understanding of social rules. It argues that, since the resilience of such rules depends on cooperative dispositions, conventionalism, properly understood, does not imply positivism.

In order to determine whether two participants in a discussion are in real dis/agreement, one must compare their propositions. Comparison presupposes yardsticks in common. Analysis of Dis/agreement thematises such yardsticks, in that it demonstrates the existence, content and factual significance of a relatively well-delimited set of proposition types and proposition patterns, with their accompanying tenability criteria and motivating interests. The book is a work in the field of legal theory by virtue of its demonstrating how lawyers' power of judgement is constituted in and through these yardsticks. The book is interdisciplinary by virtue of its demonstrating how the same yardsticks come into play more generally in argumentation formulated in everyday language, i.e. independently of law. And the book is a work in the field of philosophy by virtue of its demonstrating the existence and factual significance of language and argumentation actions with a certain independence in relation to the level of controversial fundamental philosophical positions.

The field of socio-legal research has encountered three fundamental challenges over the last three decades - it has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to legal doctrine, for failing to develop a sound theoretical foundation and for not keeping pace with the effects of the increasing globalization and internationalization of law, state and society. This book examines these three challenges from a methodological standpoint. It addresses the first two by demonstrating that legal sociology has much to say about justice as a kind of social experience and has always engaged theoretically with forms of normativity, albeit on its own empirical terms rather than on legal theory's analytical terms. The book then explores the third challenge, a result of the changing nature of society, by highlighting the move from the industrial relations of early modernity to the post-industrial conditions of late modernity, an age dominated by information technology. It poses the question whether socio-legal research has sufficiently reassessed its own theoretical premises regarding the relationship between law, state and society, so as to grasp the new social and cultural forms of organization specific to the twenty-first century's global societies.

This edited collection brings together a series of interdisciplinary contributions in the field of Information Technology Law. The topics addressed in this book cover a wide range of theoretical and practical legal issues that have been created by cutting-edge Internet technologies, primarily Big Data, the Internet of Things, and Cloud computing. Consideration is also given to more recent technological breakthroughs that are now used to assist, and - at times - substitute for, human work, such as automation, robots, sensors, and algorithms. The chapters presented in this edition address these issues from the perspective of different legal backgrounds. The first part of the book discusses some of the shortcomings that have prompted legislators to carry out reforms with regard to privacy, data protection, and data security. Notably, some of the complexities and salient points with regard to the new European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the new amendments to the Japan's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) have been scrutinized. The second part looks at the vital role of Internet intermediaries (or brokers) for the proper functioning of the globalized electronic market and innovation technologies in general. The third part examines an electronic approach to evidence with an evaluation of how these technologies affect civil and criminal investigations. The authors also explore issues that have emerged in e-commerce, such as Bitcoin and its blockchain network effects. The book aims to explain, systemize and solve some of the lingering legal questions created by the disruptive technological change that characterizes the early twenty-first century.

This book provides theoretical tools for evaluating the soundness of arguments in the context of legal argumentation. It deals with a number of general argument types and their particular use in legal argumentation. It provides detailed analyses of argument from authority, argument ad hominem, argument from ignorance, slippery slope argument and other general argument types. Each of these argument types can be used to construct arguments that are sound as well as arguments that are unsound. To evaluate an argument correctly one must be able to distinguish the sound instances of a certain argument type from its unsound instances. This book promotes the development of theoretical tools for this task.

The papers in this book have been collected in celebration of Carl Wellman, who, after forty-five years, is retiring from teaching. Here I would like to highlight a few of the moments which have shaped Carl as a person and a philosopher. Although his childhood was not unhappy, Carl faced considerable challenges growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire. He ne ver knew his father; he and his mother, Carolyn, had little money; and he fought a long battle with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, an illness which made hirn more familiar with hospitals than any young person should be. (His mother once told me that there were times when the doctors put Carl in his own hospital room because, while he was too young to be housed with adult men, they did not want the other children to see hirn die. ) Following a year of physician-prescribed rest after high school, the doctors recommended the University of Arizona in the misguided hope that the desert climate might improve his health. In spite of the doctors' hopes, life in Tucson was not easy. The heat takes its toll on everyone, but the desert was especially oppressive for Carl since his unusually sensitive eyes were no match for the intense sun. Still, Carl enjoyed college.

Bentham's central concern during the 1810s and 1820s was with the codification of the law. Rejecting both the common law and the historical approach to codification, he argued that a code of law should be based on a rigorous logical analysis of the categories of human action, and that each enactment should be followed by the reasons which justified it. Such an `all-comprehensive' code containing an `interwoven rationale' would signal a new era in legislation. Once one state had adopted such a code, other states would be obliged to follow its example, and Bentham would become in effect 'legislator of the world'. Bentham attempted to persuade legislative authorities in the United States of America, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Greece, South and Central America, and elsewhere, to invite him to draft a code of law for them. The works presented in this volume record in fascinating detail Bentham's dealings with such eminent figures as James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Emperor Alexander I, Prince Adam Czartoryski, Alexander Mavrokordatos, Bernadino Rivadavia, and Jose del Valle. The production of a methodology for codification ranks as one of Bentham's outstanding theoretical achievements. Through the materials presented in this volume he emerges as a seminal figure in the development of liberalism throughout Europe and America in the early nineteenth century.

Expert testimony relying on scientific and other specialized evidence has come under increased scrutiny by the legal system. A trilogy of recent U.S. Supreme Court cases has assigned judges the task of assessing the relevance and reliability of proposed expert testimony. In conjunction with the Federal judiciary, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has initiated a project to provide judges indicating a need with their own expert. This concern with the proper interpretation of scientific evidence, especially that of a probabilistic nature, has also occurred in England, Australia and in several European countries. Statistical Science in the Courtroom is a collection of articles written by statisticians and legal scholars who have been concerned with problems arising in the use of statistical evidence. A number of articles describe DNA evidence and the difficulties of properly calculating the probability that a random individual's profile would "match" that of the evidence as well as the proper way to intrepret the result. In addition to the technical issues, several authors tell about their experiences in court. A few have become disenchanted with their involvement and describe the events that led them to devote less time to this application. Other articles describe the role of statistical evidence in cases concerning discrimination against minorities, product liability, environmental regulation, the appropriateness and fairness of sentences and how being involved in legal statistics has raised interesting statistical problems requiring further research.

This book traces the development of Oman's inclusive agreements and highlights their importance for international negotiations, dealing with issues most relevant to humanity's own survival today, nuclear weapons or climate change. In Oman, a historical seafaring nation on the south-eastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, a culture of agreement that accommodates the interests of everyone has developed around the division of scarce water resources. Life in the arid inland of the Omani Hajar mountains would not have been possible without water. Irrigation channel (falaj) construction is extremely old and skilful therein. Local practices evolved around the division of water and land on the basis of fairness. The community would be best served by inclusion and the avoidance of conflict. A specific Islamic school called Ibadi arrived at Oman early on in the eighth century. Ibadi scholars conserved local practices. Consultation and mediation by sheikhs and the religious leader, Imam, became the law of the land. The Omanis were known as the People of Consultation, Ahl Al Shura. In time, the practice of inclusive agreements would extend far beyond the village level, affecting Omans foreign policy under Sultan Qaboos. Omans water diplomacy succeeded in uniting the contestants of the Middle East Peace Process in the 1990s to work together on common problems of water desalination.

Ideas of justice have traditionally focused on what individuals owe to one another and have drawn our attention to what is considered fair - what one of us owes to another is justly matched by what the other owes to them. However, what does justice require us to do for past and future generations? In Justice Back and Forth, award-winning author Richard Vernon explores the possibility of justice in cases where time makes reciprocity impossible. This "temporal justice" is examined in ten controversial cases including the duty to return historical artifacts, the ethics and politics of parenting, the punishment of historical offences, the right to procreate, and the imposition of constitutions on future citizens. By deftly weaving together discussions on historical redress and justice for future generations, Vernon reveals that these two opposing topics can in fact be used to illuminate each other. In doing so, he concludes that reciprocity can be adapted to serve intergenerational cases.

One of the most challenging issues facing our current information society is the accelerating accumulation of data trails in transactional and communication systems, which may be used not only to profile the behaviour of individuals for commercial, marketing and law enforcement purposes, but also to locate and follow things and actions. Data mining, convergence, interoperability, ever- increasing computer capacities and the extreme miniaturisation of the hardware are all elements which contribute to a major contemporary challenge: the profiled world. This interdisciplinary volume offers twenty contributions that delve deeper into some of the complex but urgent questions that this profiled world addresses to data protection and privacy. The chapters of this volume were all presented at the second Conference on Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP2009) held in Brussels in January 2009 (www.cpdpconferences.org). The yearly CPDP conferences aim to become Europe's most important meeting where academics, practitioners, policy-makers and activists come together to exchange ideas and discuss emerging issues in information technology, privacy and data protection and law. This volume reflects the richness of the conference, containing chapters by leading lawyers, policymakers, computer, technology assessment and social scientists. The chapters cover generic themes such as the evolution of a new generation of data protection laws and the constitutionalisation of data protection and more specific issues like security breaches, unsolicited adjustments, social networks, surveillance and electronic voting. This book not only offers a very close and timely look on the state of data protection and privacy in our profiled world, but it also explores and invents ways to make sure this world remains a world we want to live in.

This unique study offers a comprehensive analysis of American jurisprudence from its emergence in the later stages of the nineteenth century through to the present day. The author argues that it is a mistake to view American jurisprudence as a collection of movements and schools which have emerged in opposition to each other. By offering a highly original analysis of legal formalism, legal realism, policy science, process jurisprudence, law and economics, and critical legal studies, he demonstrates that American jurisprudence has evolved as a collection of themes which reflects broader American intellectual and cultural concerns.

This book tackles questions related to democracy, populism and truth, with results that are sure to inform pressing academic and popular debates. It is common to describe many of today's most energizing politicians and political movements as populist. Some are progressive advocates of greater economic democracy or individual rights, while others are recognizably authoritarian and anti-democratic, even while claiming to defend democracy. What all populist leaders share in common is a rhetorical approach: their ability to articulate, or at least profess to channel, the wishes of 'the people', a group that populist leaders claim a unique ability to understand and govern, especially with regard to their dissatisfaction with ruling elites. They decry corruption (although not necessarily with any sincerity), and they sometimes identify more mainstream politicians and bureaucrats as 'enemies of the people.' The rise of populist politics raises pressing questions about the nature of populism, but also about relationships between populism and democratic institutions. For example, is populism ever a democratic tendency, or does its invocation of a monolithic demos ('the people') signify a fundamentally anti-democratic worldview? Populist political rhetoric also raises concerns about the relationship between truth, democracy, and journalistic integrity. While the history of anti-democratic advocacy (famously illustrated by Plato) has often highlighted the tendency of a democratic style of politics to prioritize popularity over truth, the development of social media-and evolving norms of journalistic communication and public political discourse-raise these misgivings in new forms.

The notion of "natural law" has repeatedly furnished human beings with a shared grammar in times of moral and cultural crisis. Stoic natural law, for example, emerged precisely when the Ancient World lost the Greek polis, which had been the point of reference for Plato's and Aristotle's political philosophy. In key moments such as this, natural law has enabled moral and legal dialogue between peoples and traditions holding apparently clashing world-views. This volume revisits some of these key moments in intellectual and social history, partly with an eye to extracting valuable lessons for ideological conflicts in the present and perhaps near future. The contributions to this volume discuss both historical and contemporary schools of natural law. Topics on historical schools of natural law include: how Aristotelian theory of rules paved the way for the birth of the idea of "natural law"; the idea's first mature account in Cicero's work; the tension between two rival meanings of "man's rational nature" in Aquinas' natural law theory; and the scope of Kant's allusions to "natural law." Topics on contemporary natural law schools include: John Finnis's and Germain Grisez's "new natural law theory"; natural law theories in a "broader" sense, such as Adolf Reinach's legal phenomenology; Ortega y Gasset's and Scheler's "ethical perspectivism"; the natural law response to Kelsen's conflation of democracy and moral relativism; natural law's role in 20th century international law doctrine; Ronald Dworkin's understanding of law as "a branch of political morality"; and Alasdair Macintyre's "virtue"-based approach to natural law. "

In the last half century, the rule of law has increasingly been appealed to as a common global value. The Handbook on the Rule of Law analyses the appeal of this idea, its context, and background through a range of questions about the character, history and global reach of the rule of law, offering readers a definitive understanding of this central global norm. Original contributions from leading academics explore the rule of law conceptually and historically through its associated institutions, as well as examine detailed cases evaluating how the everyday application of the rule of law impacts society as a whole. Exploring a wide range of research on the social, political and economic dimensions of the rule of law, this Handbook clearly illustrates the link between the rule of law and the global political system. This informative Handbook will be key reading for post-graduate students of international relations, global politics, and law, as well as for legal scholars wanting to build upon their knowledge with a wider account of the rule of law. Researchers in areas impacted by the rule of law will also find this volume to be stimulating reading. Contributors include: J. Allison, T. Almeida Cravo, D. Banik, A. Bedner, P. Costa, C. Cutler, D.l. Desai, C. Feinaugle, J. Flood, T. Ginsburg, J. Gutmann, S. Hinderling, D. Howath, T. Kellogg, T. Krever, M. Krygier, A. Loretoni, F. Macaulay, A. Magen, C. May, J. Moller, P. Nicholson, L. Pech, M.M. Prado, M. Rishmawi, C. Schwoebel-Patel, L.B. Tiede, V. Vadi, S. Voigt, C. Walker, A. Wiener, A. Winchester, P. Zumbansen

This volume presents a variety of both normative and descriptive perspectives on the use of precedent by the United States Supreme Court. It brings together a diverse group of American legal scholars, some of whom have been influenced by the Segal/Spaeth "attitudinal" model and some of whom have not. The group of contributors includes legal theorists and empiricists, constitutional lawyers and legal generalists, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars. The book addresses questions such as how the Court establishes durable precedent, how the Court decides to overrule precedent, the effects of precedent on case selection, the scope of constitutional precedent, the influence of concurrences and dissents, and the normative foundations of constitutional precedent. Most of these questions have been addressed by the Court itself only obliquely, if at all. The volume will be valuable to readers both in the United States and abroad, particularly in light of ongoing debates over the role of precedent in civil-law nations and emerging legal systems.

A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence is the first-ever multivolume treatment of the issues in legal philosophy and general jurisprudence, from both a theoretical and a historical perspective. The work is aimed at jurists as well as legal and practical philosophers. Edited by the renowned theorist Enrico Pattaro and his team, this book is a classical reference work that would be of great interest to legal and practical philosophers as well as to jurists and legal scholar at all levels. Thework is divided The theoretical part (published in 2005), consisting of five volumes, covers the main topics of the contemporary debate; the historical part, consisting of six volumes (Volumes 6-8 published in 2007; Volumes 9 and 10, published in 2009; Volume 11 published in 2011 and volume 12 forthcoming in 2012/2013), accounts for the development of legal thought from ancient Greek times through the twentieth century. The entire set will be completed with an index.

Volume 11
Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World

Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World offers a fresh, philosophically engaged, critical interpretation of the main currents of jurisprudential thought in the English-speaking world of the 20th century. It tells the tale of two lectures and their legacies: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. s The Path of Law (1897) and H.L.A. Hart s Holmes Lecture, Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals (1958). Holmes s radical challenge to late 19th century legal science gave birth to a rich variety of competing approaches to understanding law and legal reasoning from realism to economic jurisprudence to legal pragmatism, from recovery of key elements of common law jurisprudence and rule of law doctrine in the work of Llewellyn, Fuller and Hayek to root-and-branch attacks on the ideology of law by the Critical Legal Studies and Feminist movements. Hart, simultaneously building upon and transforming the undations of Austinian analytic jurisprudence laid in the early 20th century, introduced rigorous philosophical method to English-speaking jurisprudence and offered a reinterpretation of legal positivism which set the agenda for analytic legal philosophy to the end of the century and beyond. A wide-ranging debate over the role of moral principles in legal reasoning, sparked by Dworkin s fundamental challenge to Hart s theory, generated competing interpretations of and fundamental challenges to core doctrines of Hart s positivism, including the nature and role of conventions at the foundations of law and the methodology of philosophical jurisprudence.

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"Susan Carle has done an extraordinary service. Her collection is sophisticated, challenging, and desperately needed. The legal academy is often sadly prone to treat the ethics of lawyering as an afterthought or a necessary nuisance. This smart collection of critical essays gives the subject the serious attention it deserves."
--Peggy Cooper Davis, New York University School of Law

"Carle has put together an important collection of readings. This book will be a valuable addition to any course on the legal profession."
--David Wilkins, Harvard Law School

"Susan Carle's book brings together the best writings on the more visionary and justice-seeking goals of the legal profession. Lawyers should serve society, clients at large, as well as clients in need. This book will be assigned reading in courses devoted to lawyering and social justice--it should be required reading for all legal professionals."
--Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown University Law Center

"Lawyers and law students alike will benefit from this volume's strong and persuasive reminder that traditional 'good' lawyering and a moral commitment to social justice can walk hand in hand. Teachers who want to remind students of why they came to law school--to leave the world a better place than they found it--will find this book a great asset."
--Richard Zitrin, author of "Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law"

Legal ethics should be far more than a set of rules on professional responsibility; they can serve as a means for changing power relations, empowering the disenfranchised, and advocating progressive social change. Lawyers' Ethics and the Pursuitof Social Justice broadens the discussion on legal ethics by first introducing the historical and theoretical background and then connecting it to real world issues while addressing lawyers' ethical obligations to work for social justice.

The reader features differing critical approaches and opens up new avenues of ethical debate. While the literature included is diverse and interdisciplinary, it shares a vision of legal ethical inquiry as a means for changing power relations, empowering the disenfranchised, and advocating progressive social change. Through a combination of provocative selections, lively writing, concrete examples of cases and social movements, and incisive editorial commentary, Lawyersa Ethics and the Pursuit of Social Justice defines the emergence of an exciting new field of critical legal ethics scholarship.