About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

5 Hum. Rts. 1 (1975-1976)
Lawyers as Professionals: Some Moral Issues

handle is hein.journals/huri5 and id is 9 raw text is: Articles LAWYERS AS PROFESSIONALS: SOME MORAL ISSUES RICHARD WASSERSTROM* In this paper I examine two moral criticisms of lawyers which, if well-founded, are fundamental. Neither is new but each appears to apply with particular force today. Both tend to be made by those not in the mainstream of the legal profession and to be rejected by those who are in it. Both in some sense concern the lawyer-client relationship. The first criticism centers around the lawyer's stance toward the world at large. The accusation is that the lawyer-client relationship renders the lawyer at best systematically amoral and at worst more than occasionally immoral in his or her dealings with the rest of mankind. The second criticism focuses upon the relationship between the lawyer and the client. Here the charge is that it is the lawyer-client relationship which is morally objectionable because it is a relation- ship in which the lawyer dominates and in which the lawyer typi- cally, and perhaps inevitably, treats the client in both an impersonal and a paternalistic fashion. To a considerable degree these two criticisms of lawyers derive, I believe, from the fact that the lawyer is a professional. And to the extent to which this is the case, the more generic problems I will be exploring are those of professionalism generally. But in some respects, the lawyer's situation is different from that of other professionals. The lawyer is vulnerable to some moral criticism that does not as readily or as easily attach to any other professional. And this, too, is an issue that I shall be examining.' * B.A. 1957, Amherst College; M.A. 1958, Ph.D. 1960, University of Michi- gan; LL.B. 1960, Stanford. Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Uni- versity of California School of Law, Los Angeles. This article is a revised ver- sion of a lecture given at Amherst College in 1974 as a part of the Copeland Colloquium series on morality and the professions. I Because of the significance. for my analysis of the closely related concepts of a profession and a professional, it will be helpful to indicate at the outset what I take to be the central features of a profession. But first there is an ambiguity that must be noted so that it can be dismissed. There is one sense of professional and hence of profession with which I am not concerned. That is the sense in which there are in our culture, professional

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most