I have resolved to be more vigilant in calling ethics fouls on the various repeat ethical transgressions that proliferate in our society and political discourse. I wrote about some of them here; I just encountered another in an alleged legal ethics news letter. An alleged legal ethics newsletter that I have to pay for. Uh-uh, I’m not letting that pass. I was already triggered because I saw another TV commercial where two people were playing chess and the board was set up wrong. As soon as I see it again and note the product, I will out the company here. For so I have sworn.
Renee (Newman) Knake Jefferson is, she tells us, a law professor and an award-winning author. She “regularly consults on matters related to lawyer/judicial ethics and the first amendment and lawyer speech.” Jefferson holds the Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center where she teaches ethics, constitutional law, and a writing seminar on gender, power, law, and leadership. Based on these credentials and the fact that a lot of the legal ethics blogs have been going defunct lately, I decided to subscribe to her weekly Legal Ethics Roundup at substack which promised to keep me up to date on significant developments in the field.
So far, I have been underwhelmed by the content, but today, in a special “bonus” mid-week installment, she waxed enthusiastic over President Biden’s grandstanding proposal, announced at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, to “reform” the U.S. Supreme Court, a completely unserious stunt to create a campaign issue. OK, Jefferson is a progressive Democrat like almost all law professors, especially youngish female law professors, and Supreme Court reform is one of her hobby horses. I don’t begrudge her that, if her newsletter is useful and objective, and, you know ethical.
Then I read this passage: “Biden contrasted the expansion of civil rights during Johnson’s presidency with the contraction of rights by the Supreme Court in recent years, including voting (Shelby County) and reproductive health (Dobbs). He tied the expansion of presidential power through the immunity recently granted by the Supreme Court with a threat to civil liberties.” That’s a mischaracterization of both Shelby and Dobbs, which were SCOTUS opinions that upheld the rights of states to decide matters that were not specifically reserved to the federal government in the Constitution. But again, okay, that’s a legal disagreement, not an ethical one. But the use of the deceitful and dishonest term “reproductive health” is not acceptable from anyone calling themselves an ethicist or legal ethics expert.
I wrote, in a comment to the piece,
I must say that it is disheartening to find the author of a legal ethics newsletter stooping to deceitful and partisan cover phrases like “reproductive health.” The competing ethical principals in the matter of abortion should not be brushed aside by ignoring one of them, which is the unborn human being’s right to live, and not to be snuffed out at a whim. The inability of legal ethicists to stay as objective and neutral as the field requires has been seriously harmful to the profession, and this was another example. The issue is abortion. You are writing for adults. Stop playing rhetorical games.
If the professor wants to make the ethical argument for abortion, which is a complex and nuanced one if made honestly, that’s swell. If she wants to make the legal argument that Roe shouldn’t have been overturned, fine; there are respectable legal arguments to be made. However, using the phrase “reproductive health” as a substitute for abortion is not ethical. It is unethical, exactly as calling illegal immigration “immigration,” illegal immigrants “undocumented aliens,” sex-change surgery and the use of puberty-blockers “gender-affirming care,” Black Lives Matter riots “mostly peaceful demonstrations” and all of the other dishonest, issue-ducking word games employed by the Orwellian Left is unethical.
I have reached my breaking point regarding my increasingly unethical field. I just exchanged ethics reports in an arbitration with an ethics expert far more credentialed than I am, and I was stunned at the position the expert argued for. It was directly contrary to the relevant ethics rules and their plain meaning. But, to be fair, the expert’s fee for writing the thing was calculated at a thousand bucks an hour, so what the hell. The customer is always right.
I’m not that kind of an ethicist. Nor am I Professor Jefferson’s kind, avoiding dealing with a difficult ethics conflict by cynically defining it out of existence. The right to “reproductive health” is not the core ethical matter at the heart of the abortion debate. The right to kill a nascent human being so you can look nice in a prom dress is.
I have not had good luck so far with substack subscriptions. We discussed on other posts ways that Ethics Alarms might help pay some of my bills: this is one of several reasons I am biased against any subscription scheme. In the field of ethics, influence and money corrupts.
Just like everywhere else.
Ethics Alarms 
for many years, I have begun my 4ths of July by reading the Declaration of Independence.
most years, reading it gives me a new insight. I believe the recent decision on presidential immunity raised an issue from the Declaration of Independence about the creation of offices (having to do with the prosecution of Trump by a special prosecutor). I had the context to appreciate the analysis.
Biden’s proposal to reform the Supreme Court annoys me because I would bet that most people do not understand how we got here. The Declaration decried that judges were dependent on the King for their pay and tenure (sorry, not quoting chapter and verse). Because of this, the Constitution gave the separate but equal third branch lifetime tenure without a reduction in pay.
in other words, Biden is pivoting toward King George III. We literally fought a war to avoid what Biden is proposing.
PS Trump is a threat to democracy.
-Jut
You just reminded me of more proof of how distracted I’ve been. I completely forgot Gettysburg. Didn’t watch the film, didn’t make my pilgrimage, didn’t write a post or read “The Killer Angels.” I hope Chamberlain and Custer can forgive me,
Well, if it helps I gave Custer a lot of credit on several Quora threads that I read. Usually they’re mostly dreck, but some can spark an interesting discussion, and I wouldn’t have known about Custer’s contribution before I read it here.
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The questions like “Was Gettysburg an important battle?” etc I don’t even read. Lots of trolling on Quora.
Why should we be surprised that Biden is trying to pivot to a reform that will make it easier for one party to maintain power? In the now less likely scenario of trump returning to power, I’m beginning to wonder if he should take steps to outlaw the Democratic party, who have betrayed everything this country is supposed to be about in order to maintain themselves in power.
I’m sure Biden didn’t write that editorial himself, he can barely pour piss out of a food with the instructions written under the heel. However, he is quite happy to endorse it as a means to pull a few more voters over to the side of his chosen, or should I say the party’s chosen, successor. I should note that he once said that the idea of expanding the supreme Court was a boneheaded idea. I guess his position evolved, just like everyone in the Democratic party’s position on whatever evolves if it is more advantageous to staying in power.
the proposal to end presidential immunity by legislative rather than judicial means is a thinly veiled bill of attainder. It is aimed at targeting and punishing one particular person, Donald j. Trump, who has so far managed to avoid the bulk of the attempts to destroy him. The Democratic party destroyed the economy so that the main reason for re-electing Trump would not exist. The Democratic party has repeatedly tried to tie Trump to January 6th, which they have inflated beyond being a bunch of stupid people doing something stupid. The Democratic party has inflated a single bookkeeping irregularity into 34 felonies in an attempt to put Trump in jail. The Democratic party has specifically targeted him in an attempt to ruin him financially over practices that harmed nobody and in fact resulted in great profits. The Democratic party has tried to strip Trump of his secret service protection and thereby expose him to things like what happened two weeks ago. I think there’s also a real question as to what went on behind the scenes there, since an underemployed 20-year-old wouldn’t normally have access to explosives a lot of what happened seems more and more coincidental, and the director of The Secret Service essentially claimed to know nothing. All of this has failed, and there’s a distinct possibility that Harris’s bounce will fade before September. So now they want to pass a law that will specifically make it easier to throw him into jail, just like entrenched leaders in a banana Republic would do.
I never thought I would live to see the day when communism would fall. I also never thought I’d live to see the day when this country would stop being this country.
the proposal to end presidential immunity by legislative rather than judicial means is a thinly veiled bill of attainder..
I damn near through a brick through my TV when I heard him say no other president needed immunity while in office. No other President had the system weaponized against him to drive him out of politics and society. Ironically, if this were to pass Obama could be tried for murder.
:mutter: :damn Word Press: :don’t ask:
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OK, now that I’m actually allowed to type — I was thinking that the immunity proposal was framed in terms of a constitutional amendment rather than a legislative act.
Which brings to mind, would they not only allow presidents to be prosecuted but, presumably, also nullify the constitutional prohibition against ex post facto bills and charges? Why not, instead, just craft an amendment to void both the ex post facto and bill of attainder clauses from the constitution?
I mean what exactly is the point of doing this? Except it says “We care” to your most rabid constituency. It also says “We’re vicious, vindictive morons” to the other three quarters of the country.
There is no possible way they could get such a bill through the regular legislative process, only needing a majority vote. A two thirds vote in each house? They couldn’t even get that against Trump immediately after January 6. And then to get three quarters of the states to ratify it?
In a way, this is a similar reasoning whereby the GOP got into trouble after Dobbs. It’s easy to propose a nationwide abortion ban when you know there’s a Supreme Court decision that won’t allow it. That’s how I see this amendment.
However, once you’ve won you then have to propose and implement workable laws that a majority of the people will support. That is where the GOP has fallen down on abortion — and it’s good to see Trump not going down that rabbit hole.
>>>>We discussed on other posts ways that Ethics Alarms might help pay some of my bills: this is one of several reasons I am biased against any subscription scheme. In the field of ethics, influence and money corrupts.
Actually I can appreciate that position. However, this is also to me a reason to consider the Patreon model. That would not be a subscription to your blog or to a newsletter, rather a subscription to you personally. You would not solicit subscriptions on your blog.
Perhaps half the people I support via Patreon come from links in their content, but at least a third or more came from me actively searching for that person and signing up.
You’ll certainly do what you feel is the right thing, and the ethical thing. We all know that. I think you should have the option to consider, at least.
And I am not sure it is entirely ethical to let your situation slip away until you’re unable to care for yourself. I hope and pray it never comes to that.
I promise not to keep bugging you about it.
On the “reproductive health” issue:
My daughter contacted her private health insurer to check all the details of the pregnancy cover she has been paying for three years. Not pregnant, but working on it!
“Yes, you’re covered.”
“Yes, please send me a copy of the policy”.
Repeat the request for the policy.
Repeat the request for the policy.
Ring again and ask the same question; same answer.
“Please email me a copy now and stay on the line until I receive it.”
Checks. “Where is pregnancy?”
Goes to the reference. “This is cover for abortion or miscarriage?”
“That’s right.”
You saw that coming didn’t you?
Oh, by the way, since you are now pregnant you can’t get cover for this child – of course!
Have you heard how wonderful it is to live in Australia and have “free” healthcare. The list of horror stories thus far would have most EA readers burning down the hospital!