Ethics

I'm on the fence regarding the proposed revisions to Rule 1.10, and at the ABA's mid-year meeting I heard both Larry Fox (opposing the revisions) and Bob Mundheim (supporting the revisions) make their respective cases persuasively.  One passage from the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility's report advocating for the revisions caught my attention, though:

The Committee considered, and rejected, the suggestion that prohibiting screening when the lawyer had been "substantially involved" should be the ABA model. It concluded, among other things, that the possibility of disqualification by a tribunal adequately addresses the unusual cases in which the extent of a disqualified lateral lawyer?s role in a matter or the amount of the material confidential information possessed by that lawyer raises legitimate doubts about the efficacy of screening.

This passage seems to give up a lot of ground to opponents' arguments.  If some situations, by their very nature, should lead us to question the efficacy of screens, should the Model Rules simply punt responsibility over to courts, particularly when there is nothing in the rule's text or comments to flag that danger for a judge?  The rule and comments suggest that disqualification is still possible, but do not -- as far as I can tell -- indicate that disqualification may be appropriate simply because the lateral lawyer was so heavily involved, as opposed to disqualification based on deliberate misconduct or negligent handling of confidential information.  If there are situations where the nature of a lawyer's involvement in a case makes screens inadequate to protect the professional values that are essential to the lawyer-client relationship, isn't that exactly the kind of problem that we expect the Model Rules to address?