Practical Moral Philosophy for Lawyers

Course Readings

Part I: Thinking About the Course

Course BiographyCourse TutorialAssumptionsQuestions

Part II: Getting Started

What You Bring With You

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried With Them 3-25 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990)

Can Virtue (Ethics) Be Taught?

Taking Account of Skepticism

Part III: Moral Discourse: Scenes from the Front

Scene 1: A Lawyer Turns Reflective

Seymour Wishman, Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer 3-18 (New York: Penguin Books, 1981)

Scene 2: A Law Office Conversation

Louis Auchincloss, Diary of a Yuppie 3-11 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986)

Scene 3: More Law Office Talk Between Lawyers

Louis Auchincloss, The Partners 32-34 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974)

Scene 4: Sadhus We Meet Along the Way

Bowen McCoy, The Parable of the Sadhu, 61 Harv. Bus. Rev. 103 (Sept/Oct., 1983)

Scene 5: Talking With Clients

"Equitable Awards," in Louis Auchincloss, Narcissa and Other Tales 52-70 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983)

Scene 6: Another Law Office Conversation With a Divorce Client

Stephen Greenleaf, The Ditto List 3-37 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985)

Scene 7: Lawyers With No Confession to Make

George V. Higgins, Kennedy for the Defense 1-17 (New York: Henry Holt and Company Book, 1980)

Scene 8: Lawyers Working the Edge

Walter Walker, A Dime to Dance By 36-43 (New York: Penguin Books, 1985)

Part IV: Testing the Limits of Adversarial Zeal: A Series of Vignettes

The Vignettes and a Commentary on How We Pursue a Client's Interest

Duncan Kennedy, The Responsibility of Lawyers for the Justice of their Causes, 19 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 1157 (1987): Anthony Kronman, The Lost Lawyer 128-134 (1993)

Confronting Instrumentalism

Warren Lehman, The Pursuit of a Client's Interest, 77 Mich. L. Rev. 1078 (1979)

Part V: Character, Courage, Self-Deception, & the Good Lawyer

Failure and Found Courage

"In the Garden of the North American Martyrs," in Tobias Wolff, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs 123-135 (1981)

Self-Deception

Villy Sørenson, Tutelary Tales 1-24 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988); Stanley Hauerwas, "Self-Deception and Autobiography: Reflections on Speer's Inside the Third Reich," in Truthfulness & Tragedy 82-98 (1977); "The Allegory of the Cave," in Plato, The Republic, Book VII (Jowett transl.)

Character

The Good Lawyer

Part VI: Re-Imagining Our Work

Imagining Our Lives

"Visions of Lawyering," in John W. Teeter, Into the Thicket: Pursuing Moral and Political Visions in Labor Law, 46 J. Legal Educ. 252, 255-260 (1996)

Lawyers and Pilots

F. Lee Bailey, The Defense Never Rests 7-8 (New York: Stein and Day, 1971); Diane Ackerman, On Extended Wings: An Adventure in Flight 3-14, 27-41 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987)

What We Do Is a Game

"The Gamesman," in Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: the New Corporate Leaders 89-103 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976); James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games 3-33 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986)

The Game of Judging

Duncan Kennedy, Freedom and Constraint in Adjudication: A Critical Phenomenology, 36 J. Legal Educ. 518 (1986)

What We Do as Craft

"Pottery: A Personal Exploration," in Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft: An Inquiry into the Nature of Crafts and Craftsmanship 3-21 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979); Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders 46-68 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976)

Imagining Ourselves as Stone Fence Builders

Imagining Failure

David Hilfiker, Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at His Work 72-86 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985); Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values 31-35 (New York: William Morrow, 1974); Debra E. Blum: Risk-Taking Encouraged: In 'Failure 101,' U. Of Houston Engineering Professor Offers and Innovative and Creative Approach to Design, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11, 1990, p. A15, c.2.

The Lawyer as Artist

"The Styles of Mr. Justice Cardozo," in Louis Auchincloss, Life, Law and Letters: Essays and Sketches 47-58 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979); Archibald MacLeish, Riders on the Earth 82-88 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978)

The Lawyer as Hero

Imagining Ourselves as Philosophers

Imagining Our Lives as Stories

Part VII: Lawyers as Parents/Neighbors/Heroes

Atticus Finch

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Popular Library, 1962)(1960)

Appendix: The Argument for Moral Discourse

Scattered Fragments

Legal Reasoning and Moral Discourse

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