(Papers to be published in American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and Law)
One or more presenters were selected from a call for papers.
Recent world events have led to enormous new pressures on, and potential transformations in, conventional understandings of lawyers’ professional responsibilities. The worldwide economic crisis and its causal link to financial practices in which some lawyers were complicit, coupled with lawyers’ roles in a host of recent corporate scandals, have shifted attention back to lawyers’ professional responsibilities to safeguard the public purposes of regulatory law. The challenges of combating terrorism while preserving treasured lawyering traditions that protect individual civil liberties against state encroachment have raised difficult new dilemmas. Persisting economic and social inequalities pose a host of questions about lawyers’ special responsibilities, if any, to work for social justice.
At the same time, globalization has led to increased linkages among lawyers in sharing best practices on professional responsibility and other matters. Lawyers from different parts of the world are sharing experiences in thinking through the roles of lawyers and the regulation of lawyers in enhancing corporate social responsibility. Lawyers are likewise sharing ideas about access to justice and other social responsibility concerns. These efforts suggest new possibilities for lawyer collaboration in their roles as public citizens throughout the world.
All of these new issues confronting lawyers in a rapidly changing world raise important questions about how we should teach new generations of lawyers to assume their places in the legal profession as special citizens with potentially unique duties as guardians of justice. A diverse panel of distinguished experts will discuss these issues at the Section’s Program. The Section conducted a call for papers to fill some panelist slots.
Paper titles:
Yvonne R. Bradley - Reflections on Professional Responsibility Issues in Representing a Guantanamo Bay Detainee
Scott Cummings - The Market for Public Interest Law Services