Academic

Ayers on Legal Ethics and Lawyer's Reasons

By Lawrence Solum

Andrew B. Ayers (Office of the Solicitor General of New York) has posted The Lawyer?s Perspective: Theories of Legal Ethics as Theories of Lawyers' Reasons on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Legal ethicists have lately debated whether legal ethics should be approached from a ?first-personal? perspective. Most writers understand the first-personal perspective as a self-directed or self-interested one. The question, as they see it, is whether lawyers? interest in their own integrity and well-being should matter in an analysis of legal ethics. But their understanding of the first-personal perspective is too narrow.

The first-personal perspective should be understood to include not just lawyers? interest in their own integrity and well-being, but all of the reasons for action that lawyers consider when making ethical decisions. Understanding the lawyer?s perspective in terms of lawyers? reasons helps avoid the common mistake of treating contingent reasons as irrelevant. It also sheds light on ethical collective action problems ? both how they arise and how to get out of them. And it is the perspective from which we must proceed if we are to develop an account of what is intrinsically valuable in lawyering.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).