A Skeptical Answer to Edmundson's Contextualism: What We Know We Lawyers Know

Abstract

This article responds to Professor Edmundson's epistemological reformulation of the criminal defense paradigm, which holds that criminal defense lawyers are justified in assisting the known guilty avoid punishment. After showing that criminal defense lawyers can often be said to know whether their clients are guilty, in the ordinary sense of the word "know", the article challenges Professor Edmundson's suggestion that a special, more restrictive sense of "know" should be applied in the context of criminal defense. It concludes that we are still in the very real dilemma Professor Edmundson identifies: Our criminal justice system requires lawyers to represent the known guilty as if they were innocent, but it does not provide a convincing moral justification for that requirement.