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7 U. Bridgeport L. Rev. 223 (1986)
Defending Guilty People

handle is hein.journals/qlr7 and id is 231 raw text is: UNIVERSITY of BRIDGEPORT Volume 7 Number 2 LAW 1986 REVIEW DEFENDING GUILTY PEOPLE by John Kaplan* I would like to address an often asked, many times an- swered, but still extremely complex question: Why would law- yers want to defend guilty people? I will try to do so by examin- ing first a somewhat different issue: Why should society as a whole want guilty people to be represented by lawyers? This issue can be approached from three quite different vantages. The first means of approach is to ask two related ques- tions: Why do we want lawyers to represent criminal defendants at all? and, second, How does this rationale change in the case when we know that the defendant is guilty? The second of our vantages involves an investigation into the meaning of know- ing a defendant is guilty and the epistemology of how this knowledge may be acquired. The third seeks perspective by ask- ing what should be the consequences of an attorney's knowledge that the client is guilty. These three basic issues are intimately * Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, Stanford Law School. This article is adapted from an address given at the University of Bridgeport honoring Law Day. This research was supported by the Stanford Legal Research Fund, made possible by a be- quest from Ira S. Lillick, and by gifts from other friends of Stanford Law School.

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