Razian Authority and its Implication for Legal Ethics

Legal Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 2, December 2010

Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-35

17 Pages Posted: 25 Nov 2011

See all articles by W. Bradley Wendel

W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell University - School of Law

Date Written: 2010

Abstract

This paper was presented at a plenary session on jurisprudence and legal ethics at the Fourth International Legal Ethics Conference, held at Stanford Law School in July 2010. The question considered in the session was whether the concern of legal ethics is the morality of law, the morality of clients, or the morality of lawyers. The response I have been pursuing, in my book and elsewhere, is that all of these moral concerns are tied together in the lawyer’s role. The morality of law, clients, and lawyers are interrelated, but the political perspective is primary. The law serves a political purpose, of making public life possible despite first-order moral pluralism. When people disagree, either at the level of moral principles or over the facts that bear on the resolution of some issue, they can resolve their disagreement by force, deception, or coercion; by an ongoing process of debate (as deliberative democrats recommend); or by using some kind of procedural mechanism to establish a collective resolution of the problem, which supersedes the considerations over which there was disagreement. Public life in a liberal democracy is largely structured by the framework of legal norms and institutions that enables citizens to coexist and cooperate, despite their disagreements. Of course there are many considerations apart from law to which people refer in their dealings with one another. To the extent the lawyer’s role has any normative significance, however, its significance is bound up with the law’s function of settling moral and empirical conflict. This paper defends that conception of the relationship between law and morality, using Joseph Raz's two-level structure of practical reasoning.

Suggested Citation

Wendel, W. Bradley, Razian Authority and its Implication for Legal Ethics (2010). Legal Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 2, December 2010, Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-35, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1963900

W. Bradley Wendel (Contact Author)

Cornell University - School of Law ( email )

108 Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
United States
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