By: Lauren Weitz
One issue that is often discussed in Professor Rosenbaum’s law and literature class is the paradox between law and morality. Are the two realms so distinct that it is virtually impossible for a lawyer to be good at his profession while simultaneously being a good person? One theory that deals with this question is that of role differentiation. Role differentiation suggests that the moral obligations lawyers are forced to assume in their profession inevitably displace whatever moral obligations one assumes in his or her everyday life outside of law.
Beyond the implication that a lawyer’s professional and everyday ethical obligations inherently contradict each other is the notion that a lot of lawyers actually welcome this assumption and legal ethics education requires it. A good example of this is a lawyer’s relationship with a client. Often times, lawyers are put in a position where in order to accomplish their job, they are forced to advance a client’s goals that are ethically wrong in a social context. Take, for instance, a client who confesses to their lawyer a crime he or she committed a number of years ago that an innocent person is now serving time for. Every sense of our ethical understanding would point us in the direction of revealing this information in order to help the innocent person; legally, however, a lawyer would be prohibited from doing so because of a lawyer’s duty of confidentiality. It is circumstances like the aforementioned that persuade me to believe that perhaps a good lawyer cannot coexist as an honorable person.
