ETHICAL IMAGES OF LAWYERS
This is an excerpt from the paper...
This research paper outlines and discusses the ethical images of lawyers, as they are portrayed in fiction and in non-fiction, including legal writings. For centuries in Western literature-in novels, short stories and plays, lawyers have been cast in a negative light, as corrupt, untrustworthy and shifty, which reflected popular perceptions of the workings of the law. American literature through the Depression continued and elaborated upon this theme. Then, for a relatively brief period in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, lawyers were seen in fiction in a more positive light, a period which corresponded with the growth of a widespread and more equitably shared prosperity in the United States and a rethinking by many lawyers of their role in society. In the 1980s and 1990s, a new moral image of the lawyer in America emerged, an amoral, anti-hero, who reflected the concerns of the public concerning the lawyer's role in an increasingly divided, insecure and cynical society.The Traditional Depiction of the Lawyer In the 16th century, Sir Thomas More said that "lawyers were [the] sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters." William Shakespeare's line in his play, Henry IV, scene 2, that: "the first thing to do, we kill all the lawyers" was always good for a laugh in the stalls. For the common people in those days, lawyers were the embodiment of an oppressive legal system. They were the agents of property owners, the landlord who evicted his tenant farmers, the credit
. . .
er, sells his soul to the Devil in return for prosperity and success. The Devil keeps his end of the bargain but Stone does not. Webster defends Stone before a jury in Hell and secures Stone's acquittal. As the lawyer for the damned, Webster transforms the jury's attitude by making an impassioned appeal in which he reminds them of their common humanity and fallibility and also helps saves his own client from his hardness and meanness. According to Luban, this allegorical tale demonstrates that "the lawyer for the damned has not done his or her job" if he or she "does not try to redeem the client, and in that sense . . . is morally accountable for the client's evil doing."
During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, writers of fiction began to present lawyers in a more favorable light. In his 1942 novel The Just and the Unjust, James Gould Cozzens extols the virtue of small town lawyer Abner Coates. Harvard Law professor Chafee said the novel was "the best account I know of the daily life of ordinary lawyers" which describes "the problems of a young lawyer obliged to decide what compromises he shall make with his ideas of right and wrong in order to increase his usefulness in his legal career." In the 1957 novel, The Anatomy of a Murder,
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Abraham Lincoln, , Greenwald Mason, Mafia FBI, Mafia McDeere, Presumed Innocent, Captain Queeg, Louis Brandeis, Timothy Colt, Bar Association, supreme court, 1950s 1960s, house seven gables, 1940s 1950s 1960s, process law, seven gables, american literature, house seven, adversary system, george apley, supreme court justice, late george apley, harvard law, depiction lawyer,
Approximate Word count = 2680
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
More Essays on ETHICAL IMAGES OF LAWYERS
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
