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Walk the Line: Aristotle and the Ethics of Narrative
Get PDFLawyers are storytellers who face tremendous pressure to persuade judges and juries of the rightness of their stories. Zealous advocacy has long been a touchstone in lawyering, but lawyers need to balance zealousness with candor to the tribunal. As narrative and storytelling have evolved in scholarship and practice as powerful tools for persuasion, lawyers can find themselves walking a delicate ethical line. The applicable Model Rules of Professional Conduct do not provide a sufficient framework for ensuring sufficient candor in the use of narrative, particularly when considering the cultural and psychological power inherent in stories. Thus, lawyers can find themselves sliding on a slippery slope into ethically actionable misrepresentation.These are not new problems, and the classics have something to teach modern lawyers using narrative to persuade. Aristotle addressed the same types of concerns in his Nicomachean Ethics and On Rhetoric. Aristotle discussed the importance of keeping one’s conduct within the “mean”—to maintain a balanced approach to one’s life and practice. He also stressed the value of using good habits to develop a person’s character. Aristotle’s wisdom can guide a lawyer who seeks to be a candid, ethical, and still zealous advocate.Thus, this Article posits that incorporating Aristotle’s concepts of virtue ethics into the Preamble of the Model Rules will provide guidance to lawyers seeking to use legal storytelling in an ethical, balanced way. Providing lawyers with intrinsic motivation to behave ethically provides a more workable framework than adding additional proscriptive requirements to the Model Rules, particularly for lawyers walking the line between truth and falsity when retelling client facts through storytelling
Violence Reduction Using The Principles Of Risk-Need-Responsivity
Get PDFViolence presents unique challenges to individuals, communities, and the justice system. The Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model is framed as addressing how to respond to individuals with various forms of violent or violent-related behaviors. The emphasis is on linking individuals to appropriate services and using services and programs that can assist the individuals with learning to manage their aggressive behaviors. Much of the techniques involve addressing situational responses that occur in natural community environments; the models for delivering services and facilitating change tend to be limited to group-based therapy sessions that are not necessarily adaptable to these environmental cues (where emotions and situations are deemed to be high). Some progress has been made in adaptive therapies that extend past group sessions using interrupters, navigators, or others. But, given the complexities of community environments, there is a need for a systemic RNR framework that looks at the issues related to community capacity and relationship factors that affect the ability of the community to be responsive. This Article will describe the systemic RNR framework and use an example from St. Louis, Missouri, in terms of the implications for improving outcomes on how best to reduce violence
Three Strikes and You\u27re Outta Here! Minor League Baseball Cities\u27 Potential to Bring Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practice Claim in the Face of MLB Contraction
Get PDFLet Go of Your Sexual Privacy or be Let Go? The Woe of Public Employees
Get PDFThe issue of sexual freedom as a subset of the general right to privacy, while not novel, is still highly controversial both legally and socially. The Circuit Courts of Appeals have yet to agree whether the leading case on the issue, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), affirmatively established the fundamental right to sexual privacy. The answer to this question means the difference between a world where off-duty sexual conduct stays private and respected by the government employers and a world where a public employee can be terminated without due process for his or her intimate activities. As a result, public agencies and departments have become a place of conflicting private rights and public duties, and the resulting disputes have produced varying results among the jurisdictions. This Comment focuses on the cases involving law enforcement officers terminated for inappropriate extra-marital conduct, while the underlying argument can be applied to a variety of similar issues that could fall within the scope of public employment and sexual privacy
