Added the Philolog / More on Lawyers
- 3 minutes read - 476 words- I thought that i would share my notes on the development of understanding of some texts - in particular, philosophy texts. A weblog seemed like a pretty good tool for keeping track of my updates - and a good way to share my interpretations with others - maybe even get some worthy comment from time to time.
- The American Bar Association is in town. They have a new president (the first African-American, notably) and are reviewing new rules under which lawyers would be ethically obliged to inform law enforcement of their client’s misdeeds.
I have immense respect for the ABA as they even asserted an anti Bush Administration position on the ship-em-to-Guantanamo policies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Bush Policy per se, but when it comes to civil liberties I get really, really protective. It’s the Jeffersonian ethic in me.
Such gutsy assertions by the ABA make me feel a little less anti-lawyer (as such a sentiment is a strong in the US, especially in CA).
Then again, that may have something to do with divorce rates, if 50% of the population gets divorced, close to 100% of them have to deal with lawyers. That means that at the very least 50% of that total feel they got screwed by lawyers (_ at the very least_). As such, I’m not surprised if 25-33% of the population takes a great deal of joy in lawyer hating.
All that said, I’ve been writing about lawyers lately. I think it must be because they and their organization were probably blitzing my news sources in the run-up to their descending on SF.
I’ll not be going downtown during their visit though, wouldn’t want to bump somebody wrong and find myself in court. Or, worse yet, I wouldn’t want to get trampled in a stampede of chasers when one of the ambulances goes by (couldn’t resist a bit of a dig).
Oh! And the ABA members are discussion as whether or not their code of ethics should be modified to include a provision such that they are able to breach their confidentiality agreement in the event that their client is participating in a corporate swindler.
I am sure this is merely a kowtow to the current anti-corporate-fraud memes. In light of some of the research in the Philolog, I’m not sure that we can really resolve this discussion since we seem to have no objective manner for evaluating the ethical premises underlying moral debate.
It certainly true that:
- The attorney / client privilege is to be protected
and …
- The attorney / client privilege is to be broken under the duress of certain protections (i.e. society deems that its self preservation outweighs the relationship between the two)
Both of these are important, but which is to be weighed higher? This question will work itself out in the Philolog…
…I hope.