A popular, effective and unethical prosecutorial practice among federal investigators is to coerce businesses and individuals into waiving the attorney client privilege by threatening indictments. The privilege of having absolutely private communications with one’s attorneys in order to get legal advice is a linchpin of the justice system and each citizen’s access to fair treatment under the law. Forcing individuals to give the privilege up under threat of prosecution is and has always been wrong; after all, a waiver made under a threat is hardly “voluntary.” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, (D-Va.), has now introduced H.R. 4326, complementing legislation filed in the Senate earlier this year by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, to bar this practice. Continue reading
Law & Law Enforcement
The Casinos and the Whale
Japanese tycoon Terrance Watanabe gambled away nearly $127 million at the Caesar’s Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, and now is suing the casinos even as he faces criminal charges for refusing to pay them over $15 million in additional debts. He claims that the gambling establishments allowed him to gamble while intoxicated in violation of state casino regulations, and otherwise share blame for his outlandish losses, believed to be the most any gambler has amassed in a single year. Continue reading
The Leaked Exam: Teaching Ethics Unethically
Some University of Oregon law students preparing for exams when the full text of an exam for one of their classes, Administrative Law with Professor John Bonine, inexplicably appeared on a university list-serve. Someone in the registrar’s office had pushed the wrong button.
Oops! Yay? Uhhh…now what? Continue reading
Law Students, Lawyers and Judges With Broken Ethics Alarms, 2009
I won’t keep you in suspense: my favorite is the Harvard law school whiz who celebrated his job offer from a top law firm by getting drunk and burning down a church. Forgot to check the batteries in the ol’ ethics alarm, I guess!
Here are two cautionary end-of-year lists: from the Avvo blog, the “Top Lawyers Behaving Badly” list for 2009, and, though not rich a source for black humor, the even more disturbing “Year’s Most Infamous Lawyers” from the Business Insider.
Ethics Alarms thanks Robert Ambrogi for finding them, as well the Avvo and the Business Insider for doing such an excellent job of compiling them.
When Money Curdles Ethics
A stimulating ethics alarm drill surfaced over at Freakonomics, where Stephen Dubner challenged the site’s readers to help him compile a list of goods, services and activities that one can legally give away or perform gratis, but that when money changes hands, the transactions become illegal. It is a provocative exercise, especially when one ponders why the addition of money should change the nature of the act from benign to objectionable in the view of culture, society, or government. It is even more revealing to expand the list to include uses of money that may not create illegality, but which change an act from ethical to unethical. Continue reading
Intolerance vs. the Constitution in Ashville, N.C.
To someone passionately devoted to the belief in God and Christianity, the thought of having one’s city governed by non-believers may be repulsive. Unfortunately for the sensitivities of those facing this dilemma, the founders of the United States of America were quite specific about the irrelevance of religious belief to civic participation and the rights of citizenship. That may not stop some self-righteous political opponents of Ashville, N.C. City Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who says he doesn’t believe in God but who was duly elected in November, from trying to sue the city for its failure to abide by an archaic, and undeniably unconstitutional, state law forbidding atheists from holding office. Continue reading
Why Ethical is Better: the Carvel Saga
Read and heed the amazing story of how greed, betrayal, lack of trust, and warped values have made life (and death) miserable for the Carvel ice cream clan. “Law and Order, Criminal Intent” isn’t so far-fetched, is it?
The Resume, the Bigot, and “The Ethicist”
From Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” of the New York Times’ Magazine, comes an ethics question that I would think has an obvious answer. The fact that it isn’t obvious to many people is worrisome.
It was obvious to Cohen. A lawyer evaluating resumes for applicants to join his firm asked if he could ethically reject a qualified applicant solely because the applicant was a member of the Federalist Society, an organization much in favor during the Bush Administration, dedicated to studying and promoting conservative ideology. The potential associate’s duties had nothing to do with politics. Cohen, a good liberal if there never was one, was emphatic about whether the reviewing partner could ding the applicant for liking Justice Scalia and agreeing with George Will: Continue reading
Strange But True: Judge Rules That a Defendant’s FACE is Prejudicial
And now, from Reuters, an instance of the American justice system violating principles of honesty, logic and common sense in order to be “fair.”
As a neo-Nazi gang member prepared to go on trial for murder, he got himself some new tattoos: a swastika, barbed wire, and an obscene word. On his face! Continue reading
The Savage Saga: Wrong Embryo Ethics Unresolved
The disturbing story of Carolyn and Sean Savage’s pregnancy was a hot topic in September, but it is barely remembered now. I am hoping that bioethicists and legal specialists are still cogitating over it, however, because the ethical and legal issues aren’t going away. They are probably just around the corner. Continue reading
