Tending the Bar: The Good Character Requirement for Law Society Admission
Every Canadian law society requires that applicants for bar admission be of “good character. ”The author assesses the administration of this requirement and its stated purposes of ensuring ethical conduct by lawyers, protecting the public and maintaining the profession’s reputation. In particular, the premise underlying the use of the good character requirement to fulfill those purposes - that character is the “well-spring of professional conduct in lawyers” - is subjected to critical examination through the theoretical principles of Aristotelian virtue ethics and the empirical evidence of social psychology. The primary thesis of this paper is that as currently justified, administered and applied the good character requirement cannot be defended and must not be maintained. The secondary thesis of the paper, however, is that given the relationship - albeit a qualified one - between character and ethical conduct, a reformed version of the good character requirement can, and arguably should, be maintained by the provincial law societies.
Character and Moral Choice in the Cultivation of Virtue
It is central to virtue ethics both that morally sound action follows from virtuous character, and that virtuous character is itself the product of habitual right judgement and choice: that, in short, we choose our moral characters. However, any such view may appear to encounter difficulty in those cases of moral conflict where an agent cannot simultaneously act (say) both honestly and sympathetically, and in which the choices of agents seem to favour the construction of different moral characters. This paper argues, against possible counter-arguments, for a view of virtue ethics which embraces the diversity of moral character.
Legal Ethics: The Integrity Thesis
I. THE ROLE-DIFFERENTIATION THESIS ........................... 554 A. Moral Nonaccountability ........................... 555 1. The Argument from Moral Nonaccountability ...... 556 2. Critique of the Argument from Moral Nonaccountability .................................... 560 B. Partisanship in Lawyering ........................... 572 1. The Argument from Partisanship ................. 572 2. Critique of the Argument from Partisanship ....... 575 II. THE JURISPRUDENTIAL FRAMEWORK .. .................... 580 A. The Argument from Legal Positivism ................. 580 B. Critique of the Argument from Positivism ............. 582 III. THE INTEGRITY THESIS ...................................... 587 A. Reading the Standards ............................. 587 1. Good and Bad Readers ......................... 587 2. The Good Reader Reads the Standards with Integrity 589 B. The Normativity Principle .......................... 591 C. The Principle of Integrative Positivism ................ 595 1. Permissive Standards Providing for Moral Discretion 596 2. Mandatory Standards: Legal and Moral Reasons Overlap and Pre-empt Prudential Reasons ......... 598 3. Mandatory Standards Incorporating Moral Reasons. 599 4. Mandatory Standards Conflicting with Some Moral R easons ....................................... 602 D. Reasons for Action ................................. 604 IV. CONCLUSION ........................................... 608