Moral Engagement without the 'Moral Law': A Post-Canons View of Attorneys' Moral Accountability
Several years ago in my Professional Responsibility class, I wanted to see how far I could push my students in their embrace of the notion that the moral evaluation of conduct depends on the professional role one occupies. I asked students to imagine that they were medical researchers in Nazi Germany, and that the authorities brought them to a concentration camp, inviting them to experiment on live human subjects. Would they, as scientists, proceed with the experiments? The first three students I called on answered that they would do the experiments if it would advance the research. One explained that morality is constructed by society, and in that particular society, the experiments would not be considered immoral. Another asked, If those inmates are going to die anyway, why not have them contribute to the greater good? The third insisted that the job of the researcher is to expand scientific knowledge, and the job of the government is to define the limits of that research. Absent government prohibition, the researcher has no moral reason not to proceed. These students, I am confident, did not believe what they were saying. They were engaging my question according to the rules of good lawyering, as they perceived them - figuring out a way around any and all obstacles standing between the actor and a given course of conduct. Indeed, much of the blame for their answers belongs with the messages they receive about the values of the legal profession. Much of the law school experience sends the message, subtly but unmistakably, that cleverness is valued over wisdom, and that the law is simply a problem to be solved, rather than an inescapably moral endeavor. In comparison to the era when the American Bar Association, via the 1908 Canons of Professional Ethics, could confidently instruct lawyers to impress upon the client and his undertaking exact compliance with the strictest principles of moral law, today we are more skeptical about the existence of any moral law, much less that it could or should be impressed upon the client. Recognizing the variability of moral convictions and complexity of moral analysis has understandably made lawyers reluctant to judge their clients by moral standards not reflected in positive law. But this reluctance to judge seems also to have brought a reluctance to engage the client on moral terms. The resulting technocratic view of law is evidenced far beyond the walls of my classroom. A refusal to acknowledge the moral dimension of legal practice has contributed to several of the leading lawyer-fueled scandals of recent years, as well as to the broader malaise that has afflicted the profession for some time. Nevertheless, the prospect of putting morality onto the table of legal representation is unsettling to many. This essay looks to reframe our conception of morality's relevance to professionalism, using the Canons' espousal of moral accountability as an insightful point of entry. This essay was written as a contribution to the ABA's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Canons of Professional Ethics.
Against Professionalism
In this article I argue that when an "occupation" becomes a "profession," pressures build for its members to act unethically precisely because of what it has come to mean to be a profession. My focus will be on the profession of law because legal practice has particular qualities that make these ethical deficits especially salient and no doubt contribute significantly to the popular pastime of condemning lawyers as a class for their ethical shortcomings. However, the problem is not unique to law. I will, therefore, suggest how professionalization in general generates incentives for its members to behave inconsistently with sound ethical principles. Part One traces the historical development of the public and organizational consciousness of the ethical norms appropriate to the American legal profession. That history lays the foundation for the argument that concludes Part One: Because professions provide services that are seen as fundamental to the well being of the community and because providing those services requires significant skill, including intellectual skill, a sizable portion of the community depends crucially on both the competence and the fair dealing of professionals. It is, therefore, not surprising that the community seeks to assure competence and fair dealing by regulating professions through official state organs or through state proxies, including professional associations. However, this regulation pushes professionals toward a simplification of their ethical obligations, both to more easily satisfy the demands of regulation and to protect themselves from unforeseeable or unavoidable ethical missteps. In Part Two I argue that in the case of lawyers this simplification perversely leads to the very kind of bad moral reasoning condemned by the public. Because the logic of professionalization generates pressures toward bad moral reasoning, the outlook for a solution is bleak. Nonetheless, in the article's Conclusion I offer tentative suggestions for a way out of this dilemma for the legal profession through reformation of the traditional law school curriculum, in particular as it relates to the teaching of professional ethics.
La inseguridad jurídica en normas de contratación estatal
It is established by different studies that the issue of government procurement has been marred by several factors, the test objective to publicize these factors, we take as starting point the constant conflict between the branches of government to try and organize this subject; will collect and analyze diverse regulatory and case material in order to achieve evidence and demonstrate the different concepts of constant change that produces excessive regulation of the subject procurement and is in turn causing rapid changes that result in legal uncertainty for our law on the Contract Status.