Agency and Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients for Their Lawyers\u27 Mistakes

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client\u27s agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is built on the concepts of free choice, consent, and loyalty, and it is not unusual to find lawyer-client relationships in which some or all of these elements are missing

Agency and Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients for Their Lawyers\u27 Mistakes

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client\u27s agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is built on the concepts of free choice, consent, and loyalty, and it is not unusual to find lawyer-client relationships in which some or all of these elements are missing

Anthony Lewis and the First Amendment

It is a great privilege to be with you today to celebrate the life and work of Anthony Lewis who created modern legal journalism. I thought I would try to do three things today to help us think about Tony’s legacy. One is to sketch out what made Tony such a giant. A second is to reflect for a minute on the state of the modern Supreme Court press corps, which he essentially founded. And a third is to consider a topic Tony returned to again and again in his articles, columns and books: the role of the press in a democracy and under the rule of law. Tony believed passionately in the First Amendment but was skeptical about a special role for the institutional press in the constitutional structure, and this set him apart from most journalists and all press lawyers. I’d like to make the case that his clear-eyed and iconoclastic views in this area were a triumph of intellectual honesty over self-interest

Criminal Law Enforcement v. the Free Press

Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy: 2013 National Lawyers Convention: Criminal La