A Modern Legal Ethics

In A Modern Legal Ethics, Markovits proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally.

Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients’ claims. Next, the book asks what it is like—not psychologically but ethically—to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers’ central place in political practice.

“One of the book’s main aims is to connect ethical theory to the actual practice of adversary advocacy, including both the positive law governing lawyers and the lived experience of lawyering,” Markovits explains. “The book is designed to be accessible to a general audience and especially to students as they try to make sense of the law that they learn in their professional responsibility courses.”