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The issue at HLS, based on my passing first-hand experience, is the truly nihlistic viewpoint foisted by its faculty on students. That is, in the main, the facu

The issue at HLS, based on my passing first-hand experience, is the truly nihlistic viewpoint foisted by its faculty on students. That is, in the main, the faculty appear to deny the very existence of good and evil (as judged by the practice of their former students). While this makes for interesting legal argument, it does real social harm. When you remove all morality and extrinsic ethical considerations, what's left is bloodsport for a lawyer's personal enrichment. The author describes the symptoms and, in the third semester, this person has not yet identified the disease. The rebuttal should be that counsel acting for an organization is somewhat like a teacher to students. Putting such people in positions of authority in corporate America is a "win" for justice to the extent they can effectively guide more, and more influential, people to the ends of justice and fair play. Maybe that's an ideal, but unfortunately from my own experience it's just not what HLS has taught its students in recent years to do, and I hold the faculty responsible.

rayiner 4y ago
That’s a totally mistaken understanding of lawyers’ roles. We are highly trusted components of a system for resolving disputes and governing society. That system isn’t for us. It’s for everyone else. Our only job is to ensure that the system operates according to the specification. It’s not our job to leverage our trusted position in the system to advance our personal view of morality or ethics. Society doesn’t need us to be its conscience. Indeed, that destroys the very system we are supposed to serve.
- karpierz 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - epups 4y ago
    Should a doctor decide to let a murderer die, because that would be the ethical thing to do (according to their own ethics)?
    - karpierz 4y ago
      No, but if they find themselves picking a career track where they solely treat murderers so that they can go on to murder more people without consequence, maybe the doctors should look to reform the system? And maybe doctors should not encourage that kind of ethos in med school?
      - epups 4y ago
        I would much rather live in a world where punishment is reserved for the judicial system - where, thanks to lawyers, everyone gets a chance to a proper defense - than your intended alternative.
        karpierz 4y ago
        Can you describe my intended alternative with some detail? I don't see how it conflicts with "everyone gets a chance to a proper defense" (at least as much as "everyone gets a chance to a proper defense" is true in the current system), so there might be some misunderstanding here.
        epups 4y ago
        >Can you describe my intended alternative with some detail? I can't. That makes two of us.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    This viewpoint leads to an irresolvable contradiction, in the U.S. at least, as another user pointed out: > The US enshrined in the Constitution that every single person, no matter what they did, will have the right to a legal defense. If that is the case, how would morality play a role here? Are you suggesting that we should teach lawyers to only represent clients they think are good people? If lawyers exercised their own independent views of morality and ethics that would imply the possibility that very odious people can be left without any legal representation. Which is contrary to the constitution.
    - bhupy 4y ago
      100%. James B Donovan[1] was (in)famously admonished for defending a Soviet spy (as dramatized in the Spielberg film Bridge of Spies), but that's what set us apart from the rest of the world. If the relative amorality of upholding The Law is unpalatable for some, then maybe they aren't cut out to practice law. Perhaps being made of sterner stuff is a key prerequisite, not too different from practicing medicine, where the hippocratic oath obliges one to medically serve even the most repugnant criminals. [1] https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/metadiplomat-the-real-life-story-of-bridge-of-spies-hero-james-b-donovan/ https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/metadiplomat-the-r...
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Thanks for the link and example. There's a certain generosity of spirit and heart needed to maintain such a belief in spite of external pressures, especially in the 60s.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - karpierz 4y ago
      So lawyers shouldn't vote? Shouldn't lobby for changes in law? Shouldn't encourage each other to take up fields to help those with legal recourse (ex: public defenders)? Shouldn't discourage lawyers from going into money-making schemes that effectively exploit those without money to defend themselves? There's a lot of room between "lawyers have no responsibility for remedying injustice in the current system" and "lawyers should just decide who's guilty and refuse to deal with them".
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Just as I think Nazis should have the right to free speech, someone accused of the most heinous crime imaginable should also have the right to a legal defense and for that defense to advocate in the best interests of the defendant, even if that legal team is fully aware that they did the thing they are accused of doing. IMO (and IANAL), I think that the ethics of the situation demand that lawyers represent the best interests of their clients in civil and criminal matters.
  - torstenvl 4y ago
    It's ironic that you reference Nuremberg, because the Nuremberg trials actually make exactly the opposite point. > The future will never have to ask with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will show that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man. But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute to our strength. . . . The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust, would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. You want to compare ensuring a fair trial to the Nazis "just following orders"? Okay. What is your alternative, then, other than unfair trials? How is that justice?
    - karpierz 4y ago
      I'm not sure how you got "I think that lawyers should rig trials" from "I think lawyers should recognize injustice in the system and work to reform it instead of claiming that they have no responsibility for the way the system functions." Do you take issue with the latter?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - torstenvl 4y ago
        I never said anything about rigging trials, and you know I didn't. Ensuring a fair trial goes way beyond simply not rigging it. Hyperbole and dishonesty don't make for good discussion. If you want to learn more about the ethics of being a lawyer and the fundamental principles underlying the fair administration of justice, I encourage you to listen to the experts in that field rather than propagating snark.
- cxr 4y ago
  This seems remarkably close to those instances where someone describes a problem and then a respondent just repeats the problem back as if to frame it as an argument when it's really just an empty response. Viz: > [We only] ensure that the system operates according to the specification Right. That's the substance of the complaint.
  - akomtu 4y ago
    Another way to look at this is the "goodness conservation" law: if you enable some lawyers to be agents of good, you'll also enable some lawyers to be agents of evil; you can't empower just one side. The alternative is when everyone is neutral.
    - diag 4y ago
      But neutrality is imaginary in reality. Because law is a flawed reflection of society's morality
- beambot 4y ago
  This is the attorney equivalent of "I was just following orders", which has been rejected many times as a defense against war crimes... While your viewpoint is a reasonable interpretation of "the law", it completely ignores the higher-order responsibility for "justice" to serve as a moral compass and balance of power.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    It’s not my “interpretation of the ‘law’” but rather the philosophical underpinning of how our legal system fits into our system of democracy. Lawyers have tremendous power over how the legal system operates. If they substitute their “moral compass” for that of the public, that undermines both the rule of law and democracy. Your comparison to “following orders” is specious. Lawyers are bound by criminal laws the same as soldiers are bound by the laws of war. “Following orders” isn’t a defense in either case. But soldiers aren’t expected to independently apply their moral judgment. “War crimes” are defined by international consensus. And soldiers are bound to “follow orders” when they’re not being asked to commit war crimes.
- snorkel 4y ago
  Well put. Lawyers are like referees to ensure a legal contest followed the rules. Everyone wants guilty villains to end up in jail, but if the villain is tried in a biased and unruly proceeding then the villain’s sentence can be overturned. Giving even the most obviously guilty villain a competent defense ensures there’s no mistrial loophole in the process. Focusing on good and evil helps write laws, but in legal trial proceeding prosecutors and defenders need to proceed with nearly pure objective focus on facts and proof of intentional violations of written laws.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  It's a strange day when I see a rayiner post I completely agree with, but... people just don't understand that not only is this how most lawyers view their role, but it is absolutely critical that they do so in order for our society to function as designed. Even the relatively more activist lawyers I know would agree at least in principle to some version of the thought process articulated above. They have to! In fact, attorneys typically hold themselves to extremely high standards of ethics - just not the ethics people think of. I'm sure they exist, but out of all the many lawyers I've met, I have never met one who did not take things like attorney-client privilege, being an officer of the court, or duties surrounding disclosure and discovery and conflicts of interest extremely seriously. It's very much a case of "orange and blue morality"[0]: It's not that the rules they follow aren't taken seriously, it's that those rules are not the rules most people imagine. So, the idea that attorneys should abandon the principles of the system they've dedicated their life to because some layperson's sense of ethics demands it is foolish, in that even if it might produce a "better" result to your sensibilities or mine, it's simply not going to happen, not because attorneys are amoral, but precisely the opposite: Because they are moral according to the morality of their system. Look: People don't like the justice system because it doesn't always produce results that they agree with. They don't like or understand its convoluted, highly layered, self-referential sets of ever-shifting, multi-faceted rules and tests and interpretations and arguments about the technicalities of meanings of words. And that's fine. But a system of justice based on even the most altruistic "X seems right to me" is going to be an order of magnitude worse for at least some people, and I have yet to hear an idea for replacing our current system that doesn't boil down to either that or our current system, but it somehow magically always makes the decisions people personally want. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMor...
Aperocky 4y ago
Ah, Church of England problem.
epups 4y ago
The US enshrined in the Constitution that every single person, no matter what they did, will have the right to a legal defense. If that is the case, how would morality play a role here? Are you suggesting that we should teach lawyers to only represent clients they think are good people?
908B64B197 4y ago
> When you remove all morality and extrinsic ethical considerations, what's left is bloodsport for a lawyer's personal enrichment. Since when are lawyers anything other than mercenaries? They are hired to win an adversarial game, not to decide what is moral or not.

rayiner 4y ago

That’s a totally mistaken understanding of lawyers’ roles. We are highly trusted components of a system for resolving disputes and governing society. That system isn’t for us. It’s for everyone else. Our only job is to ensure that the system operates according to the specification. It’s not our job to leverage our trusted position in the system to advance our personal view of morality or ethics. Society doesn’t need us to be its conscience. Indeed, that destroys the very system we are supposed to serve.

karpierz 4y ago
[flagged]
- epups 4y ago
  Should a doctor decide to let a murderer die, because that would be the ethical thing to do (according to their own ethics)?
  - karpierz 4y ago
    No, but if they find themselves picking a career track where they solely treat murderers so that they can go on to murder more people without consequence, maybe the doctors should look to reform the system? And maybe doctors should not encourage that kind of ethos in med school?
    - epups 4y ago
      I would much rather live in a world where punishment is reserved for the judicial system - where, thanks to lawyers, everyone gets a chance to a proper defense - than your intended alternative.
      - karpierz 4y ago
        Can you describe my intended alternative with some detail? I don't see how it conflicts with "everyone gets a chance to a proper defense" (at least as much as "everyone gets a chance to a proper defense" is true in the current system), so there might be some misunderstanding here.
        epups 4y ago
        >Can you describe my intended alternative with some detail? I can't. That makes two of us.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  This viewpoint leads to an irresolvable contradiction, in the U.S. at least, as another user pointed out: > The US enshrined in the Constitution that every single person, no matter what they did, will have the right to a legal defense. If that is the case, how would morality play a role here? Are you suggesting that we should teach lawyers to only represent clients they think are good people? If lawyers exercised their own independent views of morality and ethics that would imply the possibility that very odious people can be left without any legal representation. Which is contrary to the constitution.
  - bhupy 4y ago
    100%. James B Donovan[1] was (in)famously admonished for defending a Soviet spy (as dramatized in the Spielberg film Bridge of Spies), but that's what set us apart from the rest of the world. If the relative amorality of upholding The Law is unpalatable for some, then maybe they aren't cut out to practice law. Perhaps being made of sterner stuff is a key prerequisite, not too different from practicing medicine, where the hippocratic oath obliges one to medically serve even the most repugnant criminals. [1] https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/metadiplomat-the-real-life-story-of-bridge-of-spies-hero-james-b-donovan/ https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/metadiplomat-the-r...
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Thanks for the link and example. There's a certain generosity of spirit and heart needed to maintain such a belief in spite of external pressures, especially in the 60s.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - karpierz 4y ago
    So lawyers shouldn't vote? Shouldn't lobby for changes in law? Shouldn't encourage each other to take up fields to help those with legal recourse (ex: public defenders)? Shouldn't discourage lawyers from going into money-making schemes that effectively exploit those without money to defend themselves? There's a lot of room between "lawyers have no responsibility for remedying injustice in the current system" and "lawyers should just decide who's guilty and refuse to deal with them".
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Just as I think Nazis should have the right to free speech, someone accused of the most heinous crime imaginable should also have the right to a legal defense and for that defense to advocate in the best interests of the defendant, even if that legal team is fully aware that they did the thing they are accused of doing. IMO (and IANAL), I think that the ethics of the situation demand that lawyers represent the best interests of their clients in civil and criminal matters.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  It's ironic that you reference Nuremberg, because the Nuremberg trials actually make exactly the opposite point. > The future will never have to ask with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will show that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man. But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute to our strength. . . . The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust, would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this prosecution. You want to compare ensuring a fair trial to the Nazis "just following orders"? Okay. What is your alternative, then, other than unfair trials? How is that justice?
  - karpierz 4y ago
    I'm not sure how you got "I think that lawyers should rig trials" from "I think lawyers should recognize injustice in the system and work to reform it instead of claiming that they have no responsibility for the way the system functions." Do you take issue with the latter?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - torstenvl 4y ago
      I never said anything about rigging trials, and you know I didn't. Ensuring a fair trial goes way beyond simply not rigging it. Hyperbole and dishonesty don't make for good discussion. If you want to learn more about the ethics of being a lawyer and the fundamental principles underlying the fair administration of justice, I encourage you to listen to the experts in that field rather than propagating snark.
cxr 4y ago
This seems remarkably close to those instances where someone describes a problem and then a respondent just repeats the problem back as if to frame it as an argument when it's really just an empty response. Viz: > [We only] ensure that the system operates according to the specification Right. That's the substance of the complaint.
- akomtu 4y ago
  Another way to look at this is the "goodness conservation" law: if you enable some lawyers to be agents of good, you'll also enable some lawyers to be agents of evil; you can't empower just one side. The alternative is when everyone is neutral.
  - diag 4y ago
    But neutrality is imaginary in reality. Because law is a flawed reflection of society's morality
beambot 4y ago
This is the attorney equivalent of "I was just following orders", which has been rejected many times as a defense against war crimes... While your viewpoint is a reasonable interpretation of "the law", it completely ignores the higher-order responsibility for "justice" to serve as a moral compass and balance of power.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It’s not my “interpretation of the ‘law’” but rather the philosophical underpinning of how our legal system fits into our system of democracy. Lawyers have tremendous power over how the legal system operates. If they substitute their “moral compass” for that of the public, that undermines both the rule of law and democracy. Your comparison to “following orders” is specious. Lawyers are bound by criminal laws the same as soldiers are bound by the laws of war. “Following orders” isn’t a defense in either case. But soldiers aren’t expected to independently apply their moral judgment. “War crimes” are defined by international consensus. And soldiers are bound to “follow orders” when they’re not being asked to commit war crimes.
snorkel 4y ago
Well put. Lawyers are like referees to ensure a legal contest followed the rules. Everyone wants guilty villains to end up in jail, but if the villain is tried in a biased and unruly proceeding then the villain’s sentence can be overturned. Giving even the most obviously guilty villain a competent defense ensures there’s no mistrial loophole in the process. Focusing on good and evil helps write laws, but in legal trial proceeding prosecutors and defenders need to proceed with nearly pure objective focus on facts and proof of intentional violations of written laws.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ivraatiems 4y ago
It's a strange day when I see a rayiner post I completely agree with, but... people just don't understand that not only is this how most lawyers view their role, but it is absolutely critical that they do so in order for our society to function as designed. Even the relatively more activist lawyers I know would agree at least in principle to some version of the thought process articulated above. They have to! In fact, attorneys typically hold themselves to extremely high standards of ethics - just not the ethics people think of. I'm sure they exist, but out of all the many lawyers I've met, I have never met one who did not take things like attorney-client privilege, being an officer of the court, or duties surrounding disclosure and discovery and conflicts of interest extremely seriously. It's very much a case of "orange and blue morality"[0]: It's not that the rules they follow aren't taken seriously, it's that those rules are not the rules most people imagine. So, the idea that attorneys should abandon the principles of the system they've dedicated their life to because some layperson's sense of ethics demands it is foolish, in that even if it might produce a "better" result to your sensibilities or mine, it's simply not going to happen, not because attorneys are amoral, but precisely the opposite: Because they are moral according to the morality of their system. Look: People don't like the justice system because it doesn't always produce results that they agree with. They don't like or understand its convoluted, highly layered, self-referential sets of ever-shifting, multi-faceted rules and tests and interpretations and arguments about the technicalities of meanings of words. And that's fine. But a system of justice based on even the most altruistic "X seems right to me" is going to be an order of magnitude worse for at least some people, and I have yet to hear an idea for replacing our current system that doesn't boil down to either that or our current system, but it somehow magically always makes the decisions people personally want. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMor...

Aperocky 4y ago

Ah, Church of England problem.

epups 4y ago

The US enshrined in the Constitution that every single person, no matter what they did, will have the right to a legal defense. If that is the case, how would morality play a role here? Are you suggesting that we should teach lawyers to only represent clients they think are good people?

908B64B197 4y ago

> When you remove all morality and extrinsic ethical considerations, what's left is bloodsport for a lawyer's personal enrichment. Since when are lawyers anything other than mercenaries? They are hired to win an adversarial game, not to decide what is moral or not.