"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.

Judges sometimes hear cases in which the law, as they honestly understand it, requires results that they consider morally objectionable. Most people assume that, nevertheless, judges have an ethical obligation to apply the law correctly, at least in reasonably just legal systems. This is the view of most lawyers, legal scholars, and private citizens, but the arguments for it have received surprisingly little attention from philosophers.
Combining ethical theory with discussions of caselaw, Jeffrey Brand-Ballard challenges arguments for the traditional view, including arguments from the fact that judges swear oaths to uphold the law, and arguments from our duty to obey the law, among others. He then develops an alternative argument based on ways in which the rule of law promotes the good. Patterns of excessive judicial lawlessness, even when morally motivated, can damage the rule of law. Brand-Ballard explores the conditions under which individual judges are morally responsible for participating in destructive patterns of lawless judging. These arguments build upon recent theories of collective intentionality and presuppose an agent-neutral framework, rather than the agent-relative framework favored by many moral philosophers. Defying the conventional wisdom, Brand-Ballard argues that judges are not always morally obligated to apply the law correctly. Although they have an obligation not to participate in patterns of excessive judicial lawlessness, an individual departure from the law so as to avoid an unjust result is rarely a moral mistake if the rule of law is otherwise healthy.
Limits of Legality will interest philosophers, legal scholars, lawyers, and anyone concerned with the ethics of judging.

This collection of essays is a unique contribution to understanding the issues confronting law schools in Central and Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union as they seek to ensure that their programs meet the needs of 21st century lawyers. The book is unusual in two ways. First, most of the authors are faculty members at universities in the region. Despite a plethora of initiatives to reform legal education in Central and Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, there has been little literature on the topic coming from the region itself. Second, the essays address structural issues as well as pedagogical ones (e.g., the disincentives for academics to invest time in developing new teaching methodologies and the problems posed by rigid government standards for higher education). It is particularly useful to have these essays collected in one book, so that readers can see both problems and some suggested solutions in a cross-cultural context.

What is a human right? How can we tell whether a proposed human right really is one? How do we establish the content of particular human rights, and how do we resolve conflicts between them? These are pressing questions for philosophers, political theorists, jurisprudents, international lawyers, and activists. James Griffin offers answers in his compelling new investigation of the foundations of human rights.
First, On Human Rights traces the idea of a natural right from its origin in the late Middle Ages, when the rights were seen as deriving from natural laws, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the original theological background was progressively dropped and 'natural law' emptied of most of its original meaning. By the end of the Enlightenment, the term "human rights" (droits de l'homme) appeared, marking the purge of the theological background. But the Enlightenment, in putting nothing in its place, left us with an unsatisfactory, incomplete idea of a human right.
Griffin shows how the language of human rights has become debased. There are scarcely any accepted criteria, either in the academic or the public sphere, for correct use of the term. He takes on the task of showing the way towards a determinate concept of human rights, based on their relation to the human status that we all share. He works from certain paradigm cases, such as freedom of expression and freedom of worship, to more disputed cases such as welfare rights--for instance the idea of a human right to health. His goal is a substantive account of human rights--an account with enough content to tell us whether proposed rights really are rights. Griffin emphasizes the practical as well as theoretical urgency of this goal: as the United Nations recognized in 1948 with its Universal Declaration, the idea of human rights has considerable power to improve the lot of humanity around the world.
We can't do without the idea of human rights, and we need to get clear about it. It is our job now--the job of this book--to influence and develop the unsettled discourse of human rights so as to complete the incomplete idea.

Solicitors' Accounts provides a user-friendly guide to a subject that often poses serious problems for students unfamiliar with the principles and practice of accounting. It provides comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of all areas required by the Solicitors' Regulation Authority for business accounts and solicitors' accounts on the Legal Practice Course, including full coverage of double-entry book-keeping and final accounts of sole owners, partnerships and companies. It also deals with the Solicitors' Accounts Rules and the practical application of these in solicitors' accounts, including property and probate transactions.
Each chapter starts with an overview of the areas to be covered and also states the learning objectives the student should aim to achieve. Contextual examples are used throughout the chapters demonstrating how the principles of accounting should be applied to situations in practice. At the end of each chapter there is a checklist of the key areas students must be able to understand, followed by graded self-test questions which suggest to the student how long they should spend completing them and what they should move onto next.
Written by experienced former LPC tutors, the guide is essential reading for students and a useful reference source for practitioners.
Online Resource Centre
Solicitors' Accounts is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre designed to encourage students to apply their knowledge of accounts. Interactive exercises are provided for students and a test bank of questions enables lecturers to assess their students' understanding of accounts.

This is a practical guide to policing domestic violence in the United Kingdom. It sets out approaches to help identify victims early and target offenders through the effective use of intelligence across a range of offending. It also offers guidance on investigative techniques, risk assessment, inter-agency murder reviews and information-sharing. The impact of domestic violence on children and other witnesses is discussed, and the powers available to police under new legislation are outlined.
This title provides officers with information on all the practical measures to protect victims through the civil courts and through inter-agency schemes and perpetrator programs in the UK. It also includes a chapter on the topical subject of honor-based violence and forced marriage and gives advice on the various measures officers can take. All the issues covered in the book are supplemented with useful case studies and checklists, as well as examples of log taking and relevant forms, illustrating how the issues are dealt with in practice.
The book forms part of the Blackstone's Practical Policing Series. The series, aimed at junior to middle ranking officers, consists of practical guides containing clear and detailed explanations of the relevant legislation and practice, accompanied by case studies, illustrative diagrams and useful checklists.

Legendary Sheriff Irvine Smith QC is one of the most formidable criminal lawyers of his generation. Called to the Bar in 1953, he was involved as Counsel in some of Scotland's biggest cases, including the 'Glasgow Bank Raid', known at the time as 'the crime of the century'. He also defended five capital murder trials before the abolition of the death penalty and knew the full responsibility of trying to keep defendants from the gallows. He later became a Sheriff, quickly building a reputation as a no-nonsense judge with a sharp intellect and a dry and ready wit. He presided over the test case in the Ibrox Disaster. He was also one of the finest after dinner speakers of his generation, especially on the theme of St Andrew and Burns. This talent took him to many venues across the world. Irvine Smith's personal recollections are both frank and entertaining, charting the highs and lows of a remarkable life and career lived to the full.

This book examines why laws fail and provides strategies for making laws that work. Why do some laws fail? And how can we make laws that actually work? This helpful guide, written by a leading jurist, provides answers to these questions and gives practical strategies for law-making. It looks at a range of laws which have failed; the 'damp squibs' that achieve little or nothing in practice; laws that overshoot their policy goals; laws that produce nasty surprises; and laws that backfire, undermining the very goals they were intended to advance. It goes on to examine some of the reasons why such failures occur, drawing on insights from psychology and economics, including the work of Kahneman and others on how humans develop narratives about the ways in which the world works and make predictions about the future. It provides strategies to reduce the risk of failure of legislative projects, including adopting a more structured and systematic approach to analysing the likely effects of the legislation; ensuring we identify the limits of our knowledge and the uncertainties of our predictions; and framing laws in a way that enables us to adjust the way they operate as new information becomes available or circumstances change. Key themes include the importance of the institutions that administer the legislation, of default outcomes, and of the 'stickiness' of those defaults. The book concludes with helpful checklists of questions to ask and issues to consider, which will be of benefit to anyone involved in designing legislation.

While many young people become lawyers for the big bucks, others are motivated by the pursuit of social justice, seeking to help people for whom legal services are financially, socially, or politically inaccessible. These progressive lawyers often bring a considerable degree of idealism to their work, and many leave the field due to insurmountable red tape and spiraling disillusionment. But what about those who stay? And what do their clients think? Negotiating Justice explores how progressive lawyers and their clients negotiate the dissonance between personal idealism and the realities of a system that doesn't often champion the rights of the poor.

Corey S. Shdaimah draws on over fifty interviews with urban legal service lawyers and their clients to provide readers with a compelling behind-the-scenes look at how different notions of practice can present significant barriers for both clients and lawyers working with limited resources, often within a legal system that many view as fundamentally unequal or hostile. Through consideration of the central themes of progressive lawyering--autonomy, collaboration, transformation, and social change--Shdaimah presents a subtle and complex tableau of the concessions both lawyers and clients often have to make as they navigate the murky and resistant terrains of the legal system and their wider pursuits of justice and power.

Although international arbitration is a remarkably resilient institution, many unresolved and largely unacknowledged ethical quandaries lurk below the surface. With the expansion of world trade, the pool of parties, counsel, experts and arbitrators has become more numerous and more diverse, such that informal social controls are no longer a sufficient substitute for formal ethical regulation. At the same time, the international arbitration system has veered sharply toward more formal and transparent procedures, meaning that ethical transgressions are bound to become more evident and less tolerable. Despite these clear signals, regulation of various actors in the system-arbitrators, lawyers, experts and arbitral institutions-has not evolved to keep apace of these needs.
Ethics in International Arbitration provides a framework for developing much needed formal ethical rules and a reliable enforcement regime in the international arbitration system. Catherine Rogers accomplishes this goal in three parts. The first Part analyzes the underlying problems caused by the current lack of regulation and reveal how these problems affect modern international arbitration practice. The Second Part proposes a theoretical framework for resolving these conflicts so effective ethical rules can be developed to guide and regulate various participants' conduct, and the third part proposes integrated mechanisms for enforcing ethical rules.

Throughout history, the American legal profession has tried to hold tight to its identity by retreating into its traditional values and structure during times of self-perceived crisis. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. Author James E. Moliterno, consistently argues that the profession has resisted societal change and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. In response to every crisis, lawyers asked: "How can we stay even more 'the same' than we already are?"
The legal profession has been an unwilling, capitulating entity to any transformation wrought by the overwhelming tide of change. Only when the shifts in society, culture, technology, economics, and globalization could no longer be denied did the legal profession make any proactive changes that would preserve status quo. This book demonstrates how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history: Watergate, communist infiltration, waves of immigration, the explosion of litigation, and the current economic crisis that blends with dramatic changes in technology, communications, and globalization.
Ultimately, Moliterno urges the profession to look outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes and connections with these periodic crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with the society, solve problems with, rather than against, the flow of society, and be more attuned to the very society the profession claims to serve.
This paperback version includes a commentary on the prevailing crisis in legal education.

The topic of corporate personhood has captured the attention of many who are concerned about the increasing presence, power, and influence of corporations in modern society. Recent Supreme Court cases like Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, and Masterpiece Cakeshop - which solidified the free speech and religious liberty rights of corporations and their owners - have heightened the controversy over treating corporations as persons under the law. What does it mean to say that the corporation is a person, and why does it matter? In Corporate Personhood, Susanna Kim Ripken addresses these questions and highlights the complexity of the corporate personhood concept. Using a broad, interdisciplinary framework - incorporating law, economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, organizational theory, political science, and linguistics - this highly original work explores the complex, multidimensional nature of corporate personhood and its implications for corporate rights and duties.

A comprehensive account of legal professional privilege as it applies to corporations covering four major common law jurisdictions: the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States. Higgins provides a practical set of principles to advise practitioners in the large number of areas where there is uncertainty in the law of privilege as it applies to corporate communications. This book will act as an invaluable guide to practitioners and judges trying to ascertain the often fine line between whether a corporate communication is privileged or not. In particular the book provides a concise overview of the law of privilege in the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States, and detailed consideration of: - The definition of the corporate client, which is still unresolved in England following the Court of Appeal's decision in Three Rivers No 5. - The legal advisers covered by the privilege in increasingly competitive legal services markets, including the position of in-house counsel, accountants and multi-disciplinary partnerships. - The key trends in the courts' application of the legal purpose test in connection with advice given by lawyers, and documents and communications made in anticipation of litigation. - The application of the privilege in 'intra-corporate' disputes between the company and shareholders, the company and its directors, as well as disputes between the company and third parties alleging a joint interest in the company's legal advice. - When corporate privilege is waived, including the emerging doctrine of limited waiver endorsed in some jurisdictions, the common-interest privilege exception to waiver, the extent of waiver over communications with experts when a party discloses an expert's report, and the rights of corporations to recover privilege material disclosed unintentionally. - The scope of the crime-fraud or iniquity exception and the procedures for claiming and challenging privilege. In examining these issue practitioners can compare and contrast the case law in their home jurisdictions with the approaches taken in other common law countries, which will be particularly helpful where there is limited domestic authority on point. Higgins addresses questions of principle and practice that are unique to, or commonly arise, in corporate contexts. In addition the book will provide lawyers and law makers with a critical examination of the rationale and scope of privilege, highlighting areas where a strong case can be made for more or less protection for corporate communications, or a redistribution of the benefits and burdens of privilege in intra-corporate disputes. The text is clearly laid out for quick access to information. It is an essential reference tool for practitioners in all fields of civil practice, and for students of Civil Procedure and Evidence.