Ethics

 I previously mentioned that Jean Galbraith's essay (link below), The Ethic of High Expectations, won the Burger Prize from the American Inns of Court.  The chair of the prize committee, our own Steve Gillers, added this to the comments section.

On Jean Galbraith's winning essay for the Burger/Inns of Court competition: I chair the selection committee which includes Geoff Hazard, Nancy Moore, and Rob Wilcox. Being chair means I get to call the winner and play Michael Anthony (trivia challenge to all of you) but without the cash. Well actually, there is cash - $5000 - much less than Anthony dispensed for Mr. Tipton.

All submissions we review are anonymous. Galbraith not only wrote a highly polished essay, which will be published in the South Carolina Law Review, but it contributes to the field of law and literature. She analyzes the conduct of one of the lawyer's in Trollope's novel Lady Anna. We use Trollope in our Law and Literature class (co-taught with Kate Stimpson, she's the literature part, which is most important) but I had not read Lady Anna, nor did I know of it. From Galbraith's description it is ideal for our class and for legal ethics as well. Whether it can compete with Orley Farm is yet unknown.

Galbraith's essay explores the option of using human judgment to sense when forbearance and the potential for mutuality between opponents might finesse a situation that would normally lead to the peculiar form of social violence we call "litigation."   (She was, I believe, in my ethics class at Berkeley several years ago.)

Download 2010BurgerPrizeWinningEssay