Published In
Legal Ethics
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2006
Subjects
professionalism; culture; education; legal profession; ethics; morals; social construction
Abstract
This paper discusses a discontinuity between the ways in which legal education has historically sought to reconstruct the soul of lawyers-in-training and the contemporary conceit that legal education can be value-free. It identifies a gap between early 21st century narrowly technocratic approaches to legal professionalism - epitomized by Enron professionalism and earlier conceptions of lawyering. A desire to instill a moral sensibility in apprentice lawyers weighed heavily in an earlier generation's thinking about legal education everywhere in the common law world, giving rise to the programmes, schemes, and imaginings that provided templates for contemporary university legal training. With surprising consistency, law teachers have sought to devise pedagogical strategies aimed at constituting or remaking the entire human subject - constructing, as it were, a total jurist. They have done so in order to advance good for its own sake, but also to protect against the mere half-lawyer.
Citation Details
W Wesley Pue, "Educating the Total Jurist?" ([forthcoming in 2006]) 8 Journal of Legal Ethics 208.
NOTE: The "Download" button above will provide access to a working draft, and the "Find in your Library" button below will provide access to the final published version.