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

42 J. Legal Educ. 31 (1992)
Ethics by the Pervasive Method

handle is hein.journals/jled42 and id is 43 raw text is: Ethics by the Pervasive Method Deborah L. Rhode The futility of much that has been perpetrated in Legal Ethics lectures at our law schools has made the very words Legal Ethics so objectionable that certain law teachers would gladly vote to abolish the words altogether, but on the whole it seemed better to follow the accepted terminology, and to hope that, under the despised name, the really estimable subject will achieve the good reputation which it deserves. -George Costigan' Legal ethics has long been a subject of popular polemics and bar platitudes, but only in the last two decades has it received serious academic treatment. The conventional view on most faculties has been that education in professional responsibility is someone else's responsibility. Any system- atic instruction appears unnecessary or unwise. Some commentators as- sume that coverage of ethical concerns will occur naturally and pervasively throughout the curricula, a position difficult to reconcile with available evidence.2 Other educators conclude that postgraduate courses in ethics offer too little, too late: childhood socialization, situational pressures, and practice norms can haidly be offset through occasional sermonizing by academics. These views have remained largely unchanged despite the growing importance of ethical regulation and its increased respectability as an academic discipline. Although many professional schools now require ethics instruction, the limitations of current approaches have revived disputes about moral values in higher education. The following analysis attempts to situate this debate in a broader perspective by drawing on historical, theoretical, cross-professional, and empirical research. Its central premise is that ethics by the pervasive method is an aspiration that has been too quickly abandoned. Too often the issue is cast as a choice between separate courses or integrated coverage; too seldom do professional schools seriously attempt both. Deborah L. Rhode is Professor of Law, Stanford University. The author is grateful for the research assistance of Joan Krause, the manuscript preparation by Diana Storm and Kathleen Ansari, and the comments of Ralph Cavanagh, Lawrence Friedman, and William Simon. This article is part of a longer project that will culminate in a book of materials for integrating ethics materials into the core law school curriculum. That initiative is supported by the generosity of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr., Fund. A modified version of this article, Professional Ethics and Professional Education, will appear in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Professional Ethics (forthcoming). 1. George P. Costigan, Jr., The Teaching of Legal Ethics, 4 Am. L. Sch. Rev. 290, 294 (1917). 2. See infra text accompanying notes 20-23, 43-47, 52.

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