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The Concept of Law in Legal Ethics: Towards a New Perspective

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Conceptual Jurisprudence

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 137))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the emerging jurisprudential theories in lawyering, with the intention to point out how the conceptualization of the lawyers’ role and the nature of their professional commitments are both a function of the concept of law we endorse, with special regard to what is called “positivist turn” in legal ethics. Positivist legal ethicists fashion their legal ethics account in a jurisprudence broadly influenced by H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz and the concept of legal positivism, also basing the lawyers’ role and professional commitments in the normative structure of legality. The paper critically focuses on such emerging authoritarian theory in legal ethics trying to suggest a new workable alternative, which conceives lawyers as “legal abuse filters.” Given that rules do not provide about their own application, such consideration could provide room for a general practical discourse that regards the scope of advocacy and recognizes a proper role for legal ethics that would be independent from the respect of the settled law.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Kruse (2011), p. 501. For a deep analysis see also Schneyer (1984), pp. 1529–1572. See also Markovits (2008).

  2. 2.

    La Torre (2012), pp. 1ff:

    If one had to pick three characters who figure prominently in the string of legal positivist theories that have come to pass since the epoch, indeed the epic, of codification, especially in Europe, they would have to be the judge, the legislator, and the law professor (the last of them being, in the modern age, a self-styled “scientist” of law). Scarcely a word is devoted to the lawyer: neither Savigny nor Jhering, nor Jellinek, nor Kelsen, nor Hart – just to mention a few of the great luminaries of the legal positivist tradition – have had much to say about the lawyer, except by way a few passing remarks.

  3. 3.

    For some prominent exceptions in the Italian context, see, among others, La Torre (2002b, 2010); Cosi (1998), pp. 13ff; Olgiati (1990).

  4. 4.

    See generally Crystal (2012).

  5. 5.

    Kruse (2011), p. 494. see also Kruse (2005).

  6. 6.

    See Wilkins (1990), pp. 468–524. See also Pepper (1995).

  7. 7.

    See Dare (2009), p. 7ff; Pepper (1986).

  8. 8.

    Schneyer (1999), p. 11.

  9. 9.

    Kruse (2011), p. 502; Postema (1980), p. 73; Schneyer (1984), pp. 1529–1572.

  10. 10.

    Simon (1998), pp. 217–253.

  11. 11.

    Dare (2009), pp. 5ff. See also Dare (2004), pp. 24–38.

  12. 12.

    Tarello (1982), pp. 215–216.

  13. 13.

    La Torre (2007), p. 110.

  14. 14.

    Postema (1980), p. 73, italics in the original.

  15. 15.

    Dare (2009), p. 7.

  16. 16.

    Dare (2009), p. 7; See also Freedman (1992), pp. 470ff.

  17. 17.

    Dare (2009), p. 7.

  18. 18.

    Dare (2009), p. 7.

  19. 19.

    Ayers (2013), p. 6.

  20. 20.

    See Dare (2009), pp. 7, 76.

  21. 21.

    The expression is used by Luban (2007), pp. 19 and 26.

  22. 22.

    See, among others, Wasserstrom (1975), p. 6.

  23. 23.

    Dare (2009), p. 10; Wendel (2010), p. 6.

  24. 24.

    See, among others, Andre (1991), p. 73. Focusing on this particular point, Katherine Kruse had noted that legal realist conception of law could be meant as the core component of the implicit operating jurisprudence of everyday lawyers. Kruse (2011), p. 498.

  25. 25.

    See La Torre (2002b), p. 121.

  26. 26.

    Quoted by Wendel (2010), p. 69.

  27. 27.

    La Torre (2012), p. 3.

  28. 28.

    See, for a deep analysis of such counter-shift in legal ethics, Kruse (2011), pp. 501ff.

  29. 29.

    See Kruse (2011), p. 501.

  30. 30.

    Luban (1986), p. 644.

  31. 31.

    Luban (1988), p. 721.

  32. 32.

    See Kruse (2011), p. 498. Such moral-advocacy—as Luban notes—implies the activity of “discussing with the client the rightness and wrongness of her projects, and the possible impact of those projects [on the people] in same matter-of-fact and (one hopes) un-moralistic manner that one discusses the financial aspects of a representation.” Luban (1990), p. 1026.

  33. 33.

    Lombardi Vallauri (1981), p. 625ff.

  34. 34.

    La Torre (2007), pp. 111–113.

  35. 35.

    La Torre (2007), p. 113. Quotations of Lombardi Vallauri are from Lombardi Vallauri (1981), pp. 625–627.

  36. 36.

    See generally Wasserstrom (1975), p. 6.

  37. 37.

    See Kruse (2011), p. 498.

  38. 38.

    Kruse (2011), p. 508ff.

  39. 39.

    Simon (1998), p. 138. See also Simon (2006), p. 1453ff.

  40. 40.

    Dworkin (1986). See also Strassberg (1995).

  41. 41.

    See Simon (1998), p. 139.

  42. 42.

    Simon (1998), p. 138.

  43. 43.

    See Kruse (2011), pp. 510–511.

  44. 44.

    Simon (1998), pp. 51–52.

  45. 45.

    Kruse (2011), p. 498, p. 515. “Legal scholar Brad Wendel and philosopher Tim Dare”—Kruse explains—“have each advanced a positivist jurisprudence of lawyering derived from a professional duty to respect the authority of law as a framework for enabling coordinated social activity in the face of deep and persistent normative disagreement in a morally pluralistic society.”

  46. 46.

    For a criticism of Simon’s view see, among others, Wilkins (1996), p. 269ff.

  47. 47.

    See Simon (2012), pp. 709–725. See also Salyzyn (2014), p. 1063. “While in legal theory scholarship the label “positivism” carries various nuances and controversies, its use in the legal ethics context is, as a general matter, more straightforward and uniform. Broadly speaking, positivist accounts of legal ethics share a general view that the law owes its normative content to its ability to solve coordination problems and settle moral controversies. This view of the law, in turn, informs a particular view of the lawyer as governed in her actions by the legal entitlements at issue, as opposed to, for example, considerations of morality or justice writ at large.”

  48. 48.

    Salyzyn (2014), p. 1063.

  49. 49.

    See Wendel (2012), p. 741: “Without the constitutive obligation of fidelity to law, lawyers are just sophists – offering nothing beyond the kind of half-baked moral advice that any decent client could supply for herself.”

  50. 50.

    Wendel (2004), p. 368.

  51. 51.

    Dare (2009), p. 74.

  52. 52.

    Wendel (2004), p. 368.

  53. 53.

    Rawls (1993).

  54. 54.

    Wendel (2005a), p. 88.

  55. 55.

    Wendel (2004), p. 368.

  56. 56.

    Wendel (2010), p. 89.

  57. 57.

    Wendel (2010), p. 91.

  58. 58.

    Wendel (2010), p. 98. See also Wendel (2009).

  59. 59.

    See Dare (2009), p. 62.

  60. 60.

    See Dare (2009), p. 62: “After the toss, however, you can give me a new reason namely the fact that the decision procedure we accepted has selected your preference. The normative force of this reason, however, does not depend upon me thinking that you were right about the substantive matters – and concludes by adding that: “I can accept it as a reason for action while continuing to hold on to my own view of what, from substantive perspective ought to have been done.”

  61. 61.

    Wendel (2010), p. 59.

  62. 62.

    Dare (2009), pp. 7, 76. See also Dare (2004), pp. 24–28.

  63. 63.

    Dare (2009), p. 7: “Merely zealous lawyers”—Dare writes—“are concerned solely with their clients’ legal rights. They pursue those rights ‘without fear […] and without regard to any unpleasant consequences to [themselves] or to any other person’. According to an alternative understanding, the principle requires lawyers to exercise what we can call ‘hyper-zeal’. Hyperzealous lawyers are concerned not merely to secure their clients’ legal rights, but instead to pursue any advantage obtainable for the clients through the law. Indeed, they are not really attempting to defend legal rights at all: they are attempting to win.”

  64. 64.

    Dare (2004), p. 27.

  65. 65.

    See Wendel (2005b), p. 1170.

  66. 66.

    Simon (2012), pp. 709–726.

  67. 67.

    Simon (2012), p. 722.

  68. 68.

    Simon (2012), p. 722.

  69. 69.

    Simon (2012), pp. 722–723. “More importantly, even in the realm of specific coordination, exclusionary legal judgment is often not the most appropriate way to achieve our goals. Sometimes it is better to let people make contextual judgments about how the policy behind the rules—coordination—can best be achieved. If rules about which side to drive on lend themselves to exclusionary reasoning, rules about highway driving speeds lend themselves to inclusionary reasoning. Traffic flows better when people drive at what they consider a reasonable speed given the conditions they observe around them. Strict enforcement of the rules would impede this coordination.”

  70. 70.

    Simon (2012), p. 722.

  71. 71.

    See Dworkin (1978), p. 24.

  72. 72.

    Dworkin (1978), pp. 25–27.

  73. 73.

    Dworkin (1978), p. 32.

  74. 74.

    Simon (2012), p. 712.

  75. 75.

    Simon (2012), p. 713.

  76. 76.

    Simon (2012), p. 713.

  77. 77.

    Simon (2012), p. 713.

  78. 78.

    Simon (2012), p. 713.

  79. 79.

    Wendel (2010), pp. 196–97.

  80. 80.

    Wendel (2010), pp. 196–97.

  81. 81.

    Wendel (2010), p. 393.

  82. 82.

    Kruse (2011), p. 517.

  83. 83.

    Salyzyn (2014): “Those advancing positivist accounts of legal ethics take a different view, rejecting a vision of the lawyering role that revolves around considerations of substantive justice or morality. Instead, they offer a distinct alternative (or modification) to the Standard Conception by arguing that the normative content of the law mandates that the duties of lawyers must be oriented toward respect for the law itself, not ordinary moral considerations.”

  84. 84.

    Wendel (2004), p. 366.

  85. 85.

    Dare (2009), p. 7.

  86. 86.

    Luban (2007), p. 75.

  87. 87.

    Hart (1988), p. 106.

  88. 88.

    La Torre (2002b), pp. 161–162.

  89. 89.

    La Torre (2002b), p. 162.

  90. 90.

    Luban (2007), p. 30.

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  1. “Magna Græcia” University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

    Andrea Romeo

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora

  2. Hermann Kantorowicz-Institute of Fundamental Legal Research, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Gonzalo Villa Rosas

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Romeo, A. (2021). The Concept of Law in Legal Ethics: Towards a New Perspective. In: Fabra-Zamora, J.L., Villa Rosas, G. (eds) Conceptual Jurisprudence. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 137. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78803-2_11

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