Ethics

The disqualification of an applicant for admission to the NY bar based on his level of debt and his dealings with lenders was confirmed by the Court today.  See story here.  I had commented on this story earlier (here).  My concern with excluding applicants on the basis of assessments of character is not lessened by this story.  I would note in particular that this applicant was viewed so differently by the initial panel (who strongly recommended admission) and the judicial panel (who denied it).  Exclusion of applicants on the basis of character requires (at least) two things to be true: a) that character is in some way probative of future conduct as an attorney; and b) that character in the relevant sense is capable of being identified by a panel of lawyers or judges.  I have questioned the truth of both of these propositions in my writing on this topic.  My observation here is simply that it complicates the easy assertion that character can be measured to have the character of one person viewed so differently by two different panels of people charged with assessing it - unless one body can claim that it has expertise that the other lacks.  That seems empirically implausible where one is talking about a panel of lawyers on the one hand and judges on the other - neither seems especially more qualified than the other in this respect.