In the summer of 2008 Kimberley Motley quit her job as a public defender in Milwaukee to join a program that helped train lawyers in war-torn Afghanistan. She was thirty-two at the time, a mother of three who had never travelled outside the United States. Through sheer force of personality, ingenuity and perseverance, Kimberley became the first foreign lawyer to practise in Afghanistan and her work swiftly morphed into a mission - to bring 'justness' to the defenceless and voiceless. She has established herself as an expert on its fledgling criminal justice system, able to pivot between the country's complex legislation and its religious laws in defence of her clients. Her radical approach has seen her successfully represent both Afghans and Westerners, overturning sentences for men and women who've been subject to often appalling miscarriages of justice. Inspiring and fascinating in equal measure, Lawless tells the story of a remarkable woman operating in one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

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.

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.

Since the Great Recession of 2008, the racial wealth gap between black and white Americans has continued to widen. In Predatory Lending and the Destruction of the African-American Dream, Janis Sarra and Cheryl Wade detail the reasons for this failure by analyzing the economic exploitation of African Americans, with a focus on predatory practices in the home mortgage context. They also examine the failure of reform and litigation efforts ostensibly aimed at addressing this form of racial discrimination. This research, augmented by first-hand narratives, provides invaluable insight into the racial wealth gap by vividly illustrating the predation that targets African-American consumers and examining the intentionally obfuscating settlement terms of cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, states attorneys, and municipalities. The authors conclude by offering structural, systemic changes to address predatory practices. This important work should be read by anyone seeking to understand racial inequality in the United States.

Law is best interpreted in the context of the traditions and cultures that have shaped its development, implementation, and acceptance. However, these can never be assessed truly objectively: individual interpreters of legal theory need to reflect on how their own experiences create the framework within which they understand legal concepts. Theory is not separate from practice, but one kind of practice. It is rooted in the world, even if it is not grounded by it. In this highly original volume, Allan C. Hutchinson takes up the challenge of self-reflection about how his upbringing, education, and scholarship contributed to his legal insights and analysis. Through this honest examination of key episodes in his own life and work, Hutchinson produces unique interpretations of fundamental legal concepts. This book is required reading for every lawyer or legal scholar who wants to analyse critically where he or she stands when they practice and study law.

Expressions of support for diversity are nearly ubiquitous among contemporary law firms and corporations. Organizations back these rhetorical commitments with dedicated diversity staff and various diversity and inclusion initiatives. Yet, the goal of proportionate representation for people of color and women remains unrealized. Members of historically underrepresented groups remain seriously disadvantaged in professional training and work environments that white, upper-class men continue to dominate. While many professional labor markets manifest patterns of demographic inequality, these patterns are particularly pronounced in the law and elite segments of many professions. Diversity in Practice analyzes the disconnect between expressed commitments to diversity and practical achievements, revealing the often obscure systemic causes that drive persistent professional inequalities. These original contributions build on existing literature and forge new paths in explaining enduring patterns of stratification in professional careers. These more realistic assessments provide opportunities to move beyond mere rhetoric to something approaching diversity in practice.

Many aspects relating to the conduct of mediation are left to mediator choice, but mediators often lack adequate guidance on how their discretion ought to be exercised. In this book, Omer Shapira identifies the ethical norms that govern mediators' conduct. Adopting a professional ethics perspective on the basis of role-morality and applying it to a core definition of mediators' role, Shapira argues that all mediators are placed in ethical relationships with mediation parties, the mediation profession, the public and their employers. or principals that produce ethical obligations. The book goes on to explore the legitimate expectations of these groups and analyzes existing codes of conduct for mediators. Shapira constructs a theory of mediators' ethics that produces a proposed model code of conduct for mediators - a detailed set of norms of mediators' ethics that can be rationally justified and defended with regard to mediators at large.

Many of the significant developments of our era have resulted from advances in technology, including the design of large-scale systems; advances in medicine, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence; the role of social media in influencing behaviour and toppling governments; and the surge of online transactions that are replacing human face-to-face interactions. These advances have given rise to new kinds of ethical concerns around the uses (and misuses) of technology. This collection of essays by prominent academics and technology leaders covers important ethical questions arising in modern industry, offering guidance on how to approach these dilemmas. Chapters discuss what we can learn from the ethical lapses of #MeToo, Volkswagen, and Cambridge Analytica, and highlight the common need across all applications for sound decision-making and understanding the implications for stakeholders. Technologists and general readers with no formal ethics training and specialists exploring technological applications to the field of ethics will benefit from this overview.

Law, by its very nature, tends to think locally, not globally. This book has a broader scope in terms of the range of nations and offers a succinct journey through law schools on different continents and subject matters. It covers education, research, impact and societal outreach, and governance. It illustrates that law schools throughout the world have much in common in terms of values, duties, challenges, ambitions and hopes. It provides insights into these aspirations, whilst presenting a thought-provoking discussion for a more global agenda on the future of law schools. Written from the perspective of a former dean, the book offers a unique understanding of the challenges facing legal education and research.

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.

Law, by its very nature, tends to think locally, not globally. This book has a broader scope in terms of the range of nations and offers a succinct journey through law schools on different continents and subject matters. It covers education, research, impact and societal outreach, and governance. It illustrates that law schools throughout the world have much in common in terms of values, duties, challenges, ambitions and hopes. It provides insights into these aspirations, whilst presenting a thought provoking discussion for a more global agenda on the future of law schools. Written from the perspective of a former dean, the book offers a unique understanding of the challenges facing legal education and research.

This book seeks to reframe our understanding of the lawyer's work by exploring how Martin Luther King Jr. built his advocacy on a coherent set of moral claims regarding the demands of love and justice in light of human nature. King never shirked from staking out challenging claims of moral truth, even while remaining open to working with those who rejected those truths. His example should inspire the legal profession as a reminder that truth-telling, even in a society that often appears morally balkanized, has the capacity to move hearts and minds. At the same time, his example should give the profession pause, for King's success would have been impossible absent his substantive views about human nature and the ends of justice. This book is an effort to reframe our conception of morality's relevance to professionalism through the lens provided by the public and prophetic advocacy of Dr. King.

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.

During the coming decades, the digital revolution that has transformed so much of our world will transform legal education as well. The digital production and distribution of course materials will powerfully affect both the content and the way materials are used in the classroom and library. This collection of essays by leading legal scholars in various fields explores three aspects of this coming transformation. The first set of essays discusses the way digital materials will be created and how they will change concepts of authorship as well as methods of production and distribution. The second set explores the impact of digital materials on law school classrooms and law libraries and the third set considers the potential transformation of the curriculum that the materials are likely to produce. Taken together, these essays provide a guide to momentous changes that every legal teacher and scholar needs to understand.

The captivating story of how a diverse group of women, including Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, broke the glass ceiling and changed the modern legal profession In Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers, award-winning legal historian Jill Norgren curates the oral histories of one hundred extraordinary American women lawyers who changed the profession of law. Many of these stories are being told for the first time. As adults these women were on the front lines fighting for access to law schools and good legal careers. They challenged established rules and broke the law's glass ceiling.Norgren uses these interviews to describe the profound changes that began in the late 1960s, interweaving social and legal history with the women's individual experiences. In 1950, when many of the subjects of this book were children, the terms of engagement were clear: only a few women would be admitted each year to American law schools and after graduation their professional opportunities would never equal those open to similarly qualified men. Harvard Law School did not even begin to admit women until 1950. At many law schools, well into the 1970s, men told female students that they were taking a place that might be better used by a male student who would have a career, not babies. In 2005 the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession initiated a national oral history project named the Women Trailblazers in the Law initiative: One hundred outstanding senior women lawyers were asked to give their personal and professional histories in interviews conducted by younger colleagues. The interviews, made available to the author, permit these women to be written into history in their words, words that evoke pain as well as celebration, humor, and somber reflection. These are women attorneys who, in courtrooms, classrooms, government agencies, and NGOs have rattled the world with insistent and successful demands to reshape their profession and their society. They are women who brought nothing short of a revolution to the profession of law.