Justice, Post-Retirement Shame, and the Failure of the Standard Conception of Lawyers' Roles
![handle is hein.journals/ajlph36 and id is 181 raw text is: Justice, Post-Retirement Shame, and
the Failure of the Standard Conception
of Lawyers' Roles
JUSTIN OAKLEYt
1. Dare's account of the standard conception
Tim Dare's The Counsel of Rogues?' [CoR] is a spirited and robustly-
argued elaboration and defence of a 'moderate version' of the standard
conception of lawyers' roles, in response to common misunderstandings
and recent influential critiques of that conception. Dare believes that by
providing a clearer and more systematic moral foundation for lawyers'
roles, he can deflect various well-known moral criticisms of lawyers and
restore integrity to the lawyer's role. I share the goal of restoring integrity to
the lawyer's role, but I do not think the standard conception, even as Dare
conceives of it, can deliver that adequately.
Dare characterises various critiques of the standard conception 'as
sharing an ambition to weaken the distinction...between professional and
general morality' .3 But while Dare's Rawlsian defence of lawyers' role-
differentiated duties helps demonstrate that some common criticisms of the
lawyer's role are indeed misguided, this approach raises other concerns.
The idea that lawyers have role-differentiated duties and virtues is clearly
very plausible, but I will argue that there are important moral limits to
lawyers' zealous advocacy of their clients' legal rights that arise from
within the role morality of lawyers. That is, in certain circumstances
lawyers, qua lawyers, are morally justified in not providing what their
clients may have a legal right to. I will also argue that the post-retirement
shame expressed by some criminal defence lawyers when looking back at
the tactics they used in helping clients secure legal entitlements indicates
t Monash University Centre for Human Bioethics, Clayton, Victoria.
Tim Dare, The Counsel of Rogues? A defence of the standard conception of
the lawyer's role (2009).
2 See Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking, Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles
(2001); Dean Cocking and Justin Oakley, 'Professional Interpretation and
Judgment, and the Integrity of Lawyers' in Tim Dare and W. Bradley
Wendel (eds), Professional Ethics and Personal Integrity (2010) 68-78.
3 CoR 15.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ajlph36&div=11&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Justice, Post-Retirement Shame, and the Failure of the Standard Conception of Lawyers' Roles
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