Ethics

    As Abbe Smith and I say in the third edition (2004) of Understanding Lawyers? Ethics:

        ?This book presents a systematic position on lawyers? ethics.  We argue that lawyers? ethics is rooted in the Bill of Rights and in the autonomy and the dignity of the individual.... From this perspective, we analyze the fundamental issues of lawyers? ethics....?

Included in that analysis is a twenty-five-page chapter on ?The Lawyer?s Virtue and the Client?s Autonomy.? (Pp. 45-69).

    A premise of the book is that ?In a free society the public interest is served when individual dignity is respected, when autonomy is fostered, and when equal protection before the law is enhanced through professional assistance.?  (Pp. 129-130).  Thus, the fundamental rights that have been constitutionalized in the American adversary system provide both a deontological foundation for our analysis and definitions of what we mean by dignity and autonomy.

    This analysis was introduced in Lawyers? Ethics in an Adversary System (1975).  For example, the first chapter of that book discussed the Lake Pleasant, N.Y., buried- bodies case in the context of ?a system of administering justice which is itself essential to maintaining human dignity.?  (P. 2).  Also, in a chapter on ?Zealous Advocacy and the Public Interest,? the point is made that ?the institution that the lawyer serves by zealous devotion to the client is the adversary system ? a system for the administration of justice ... [that] is uniquely protective of the dignity and the fundamental rights of the individual.?  (P. 12).

    The emphasis on human dignity and autonomy was expanded in ?Personal Responsibility in a Professional System,? 27 Cath. Univ. L. Rev. 191 (1978), which was presented as the Thirteenth Annual Pope John XXIII Lecture at Catholic University Law School in 1977.