Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2011
Abstract
Bradley Wendel's LAWYERS AND FIDELITY TO LAW exemplifies recent pushback against theories of legal ethics that require lawyers to make and act on complex judgments about the justice of their actions. Critics worry that such responsibility threatens either social order or the respect citizens of a democratic polity owe to constituted authority. Wendel elaborates these concerns and develops them jurisprudentially by connecting them to Legal Positivism. In this review, I argue that Wendel’s move toward Positivism leads him to underestimate the extent to which social order and democratic legitimacy depend on informal as well as formal norms and to adopt a utopian attitude toward constituted power. In addition, the book persistently treats as analytical propositions what are in fact empirical assertions for which Wendel has no evidence.
Recommended Citation
William H. Simon,
Authoritarian Legal Ethics: Bradley Wendel and the Positivist Turn,
Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 11-291
(2011).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1723