【作者】托马斯 L.福尔
【内容提要】
Most of what American lawyers and law teachers call legal ethics is not ethics. Most of what is called legal ethics is similar to rules made by administrative agencies. It is regulatory. Its appeal is not to conscience, but to sanction. It seeks mandate rather than insight.I argue here that what remains and appropriately is called ethics has been distorted by the weaker side of an old issue in academic moral philosophy. This "weaker side" rests on two doctrines: first, that fact and value are separate; and second, that the moral agent acts alone.The influence of this philosophical position deprives legal ethics of truthfulness and of depth. As a principal example of the distortion, I use the case of lawyers employed by and for families, and by and for associations that use the metaphor of family to describe themselves.