The Lawyer ‘s Duty of Loyalty: To the Client or to the Institution?
THE LAWYER’S DUTY OF LOYALTY by Ramsey Clark I. My subject has within its range a major ethical problem of our society and of our profession. Law can be very important to life. It is essential, finally, to survival. I would like to think of it, for purposes of this conversation, as Hegel did in his work on the philosophy of right where he saw in the development of civilization an expansion of the consciousness of freedom, with the securing of rights under law as the actualization of freedom. Lawyers are involved in that process. All too often we think that law and legal justice can be something apart from life and social justice, that we can have one set of values and aspirations and attainments in one and something different in the other. But so profound an analyst and philosopher of our law and times as David Bazelon has wondered whether legal justice is possible without social justice. II. It is almost absurd to believe that humanity has a capacity to set aside its prejudices and other predilections in a courtroom. Culture is lord of everything, of mortals and immortals king, Pindar said. Law is caught up within the confines of that culture. It’s a slower part, but it is a part. Felix Cohen has said that most judges and lawyers, indeed most people, are as unaware of their culture patterns as they are of the* The talks collected here are adapted from the Baker and McKenzie Foundation Inaugural Lecture Series: Inquiry into Contemporary Problems of Legal Ethics, at Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, Spring 1984. ** Mr. Clark’s talk, which is presented here in a version edited with his permission by the Editors, was given March… Read More
