Ethics and the law: an introduction

Abstract

‘Legal ethics’ is a broad church, embracing the legal regulation of lawyers as well as the empirical, historical, sociological and – since the mid-1970s – philosophical study of legal practice. Ethics and the Law is the first book-length introduction to this last, philosophical, thread. Brad Wendel is a singularly appropriate author for such an introduction. He is a lawyer and a philosopher, a leading contributor to contemporary philosophical legal ethics, and he writes clearly and engagingly. Ethics and the Law is divided into two parts. The first part introduces a range of philosophical issues raised by the ethical analysis of legal practice; the idea of role differentiation; reflective equilibrium and the form of common justifications of legal practice; the justification of the legal system itself, particularly the adversary system; connections between leading positions in the philosophy of law and legal ethics; questions about the relationship between citizens and government and the notions of obligation and obedience; and the challenge of unjust laws. The second part is motivated by appreciation that the role of lawyer is not monolithic: there are many ‘law jobs’ – lawyers work as criminal defenders, as prosecutors, within civil litigation, as in-house or company counsel, representing clients in courts or as adviser or counsel in matters never likely to be independently examined, and so on. These roles raise distinct ethical issues that are identified and discussed in chapters dedicated to each of the selected law jobs. This is for the most part a very good introduction. The book displays its author’s mastery of an impressive range of material. It includes engaging and deeply troubling cases, such as the one it starts with, in which client confidentiality leads lawyers to sit on a confession that might have spared an innocent man 25 years in prison, gives a sense how justification might proceed in applied ethics, and in legal ethics in particular, and draws connections between legal ethics and broader philosophical issues. The chapters on the multiple roles of lawyers in the second part are both nuanced treatments in their own right and an important reminder of the need for proper regard to the detail of particular roles within law. Too many write as though all lawyers work in court, or deep in the shadow of litigation. Wendel’s introduction is a reminder that that is not so, and why it matters. Inevitably, there are quibbles. The authors of introductory texts tread a fine line when drawing connections between their topics and broader issues: the connections can enrich new readers’ understanding of the core topic, or puzzle and confuse. Mainly, I think Wendel gets it right but occasionally he delivers a perfectly good introduction to some aspect of social or moral philosophy without making its connections to legal ethics very clear. Chapter 4, on the philosophy of law, is a useful primer on legal positivism and natural law theory, for instance (though the omission of legal realism at this point is curious, since the view has been an influential foil in legal ethics), but the discussion turns to legal ethics only very late in the piece. Chapter 5 introduces a range of views about