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Font of Knowledge: Readability and Accessibility Challenges Caused by Typeface Requirements in North Carolina Appellate Courts
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Are Technology and the Law on the Same “Wavelength”?: Examining the New Frontier of Brainwaves and Data Privacy
Full text linkA History of Security Rights in Personal Property from the Pledge to Bitcoin by Way of UNCITRAL’s Universalization of Principles
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The Decline of \u3ci\u3eCorum\u3c/i\u3e Claims: How \u3ci\u3eWashington v. Cline\u3c/i\u3e Limited Constitutional Protection for State Infringement of the Speedy Trial Right
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If You Love Something, Let It Go: Giving Up Government Mandated Online Age Restrictions in Favor of § 230 Inspired Immunity
No full textGovernment Lawyers, Ethical Dilemmas: The Case of Herbert Wechsler and Japanese American Incarceration
No full textThis essay examines ethical dilemmas facing government agency lawyers through two episodes from Herbert Wechsler’s wartime service as head of the DOJ War Division: overseeing the Supreme Court brief in Korematsu v. United States and administering the Renunciation Act of 1944 amid turmoil at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. In the Korematsu matter, Wechsler managed a brief that skirted the Army’s problematic “Final Report” claims (including shore-to-ship signaling), privileging institutional role fidelity over disclosure, and helping sustain a framework that justified mass removal of Japanese Americans. In the renunciation program, he chose to accept any “voluntary” citizenship renunciation regardless of motive, a stance that led to thousands of reversals and years of litigation, revealing how bureaucratic choices under pressure can amplify harm when lawyers underplay their discretionary power.
Across both episodes, the essay interrogates Wechsler’s commitment to a “separation of function in society,” arguing that overreliance on role constraints can narrow moral responsibility and obscure the Spielraum—oppositional maneuvering room—available to government lawyers within troubling systems. By contrasting Wechsler’s decisions with later judicial repudiation and ethical scholarship, the piece urges lawyers to recognize and exercise professional discretion: to press for candor, resist equivocation, and design implementation paths that account for coercion, duress, and the lived realities of those subject to state power