ABA (American Bar Association) Washington Healthcare Summit

ABA (American Bar Association) Washington Healthcare Summi

Hirshon, Robert E. Bob oral history interview

Robert E. “Bob” Hirshon was born April 2, 1948 in Portland, Maine and raised there. His parents were Severin and Gladys (Wein) Hirshon. His father was a dentist. His mother worked in the home and was from the Waterville area. Bob was involved with the evaluation system for the Model Cities program in Portland during his high school years. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. He joined the law firm of Drummond, Woodsum and MacMahon in 1973. Hirshon was President of the ABA (American Bar Association) in 2001 and 2002. In 2003 he was appointed National Counsel to AFFECT (Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions)

LEGAL ETHICS IN THE UNITED STATES ELABORATED THROUGH THE PRISM OF ABA MODEL STANDARDS

The judiciary is an area that has at its center some of the most fundamental values, suchas justice and fairness ... It makes decisions for some of the most important human rights andfreedoms, it influence on parts of human life that are essential ... Therefore, it is more thanimportant the ethical conduct of all persons involved in the practising of the law.The American legal profession is said to be experiencing drastic and rapid development.According to statistics, the number of today’s lawyers in the United States has never beenhigher. In the 1950s the number of lawyers and judges was about 176,000, in 1970’s -260,000,in 1987-707,000 ... But such an increase in the legal profession is not just a percentage. Thepresence of lawyers is increasingly exposed to the public, and the media ... This only increasesthe pressure on their legal ethics. But the point of view is in common: Lawyers should havebetter ethics.From the narrative rules, through ABA’s Canons 1908, to the Model Code of ProfessionalResponibility, to The Model Rules of Professional Conduct, we can see that the effort, theintention to preserve the essence of ethics has always been present, but the way it is expressedis drastically changed ... ... In fact, designing an appropriate document and implementing ithas proved a bit problematic.This paper will elaborate on the above mentioned three most relevant documents adoptedby ABA (American Bar Association) in order to understand the (r) evolution of the regulationof legal ethics in the United States. A short briefing will also be given on disciplinary measuresfor misconduct and the “channels” through which it is implemented. The analysis will endwith the opening of the question, what about the legal ethics in the digital age? How do statesface and how can they deal with this new challenge

Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston

[Excerpt] This book examines how immigrant workers\u27 rights are enforced in practice, how claims are channeled, and why and how advocates take on particular battles. In the chapters that follow, I draw on an in-depth comparative case study of two immigrant-receiving destinations—San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas—to examine the dynamics of enforcing immigrant worker rights. I consider how certain solutions become commonly understood as appropriate responses to a given issue that affects immigrant laborers, and which actors take on responsibility for the advancement of particular worker problems. For example, why does a construction worker who has been cheated of a week\u27s pay in San Jose get funneled to a local legal aid clinic and eventually a state agency to file a formal claim, while his counterpart working in one of Houston\u27s sprawling track developments will struggle to find any lawyer willing to serve him and will perhaps never set foot in a government office to file a claim? Why do the San Jose police have little to offer this worker, while in Houston any police officer is required to make a theft-of-service report when asked? How is it that if this nonunionized worker were to call the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council in San Jose, he would be advised to call the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement or seek out a local legal aid clinic, while in Houston the Harris County AFL-CIO Council would be more likely to encourage him to pay a visit to city hall, the federal building, or perhaps even a worker center to help organize a direct action, depending on his situation? And how do we understand the vastly different support immigrant workers will find from their consulates in these two cities? The goal of this book is to help answer these questions and expand our understanding of how immigrant worker rights are enforced and advanced. I situate the rights of immigrant workers in the space between both labor standards enforcement and immigration control, two conflicting jurisdictions whose implementation can vary widely, depending on their local political context. I then look beyond government bureaucrats to understand how enforcement strategies are influenced by local intermediaries who may have diverse interests in the advancement of immigrant worker rights. These include local elected officials, who can either intensify or mitigate the surveillance of undocumented immigrants and promote or stymie the interests of workers; civil society actors, who have direct knowledge of and access to immigrant workers, and who work in diverse ways to advance their rights; and consular institutions, whose unique combination of political legitimacy, institutionalized resources, and unfettered support for their emigrant population creates a unique pathway for rights enforcement