The “It Will Never Happen to Me” Mentality
posted by Michelle Harner
We started our spring semester today at Maryland, and I am teaching one of my favorite courses, Legal Profession. Having faced ethical dilemmas in practice (and unfortunately seen very talented lawyers disciplined, disbarred and jailed), I believe that this course is extremely valuable. I suspect, however, that most of our students disagree with me, which is why they typically wait until the last semester of law school to take this required course. In fact, the very first time I taught Legal Profession, I asked my class of 75 3Ls to raise their hands if they would “elect” to take Legal Profession if it was not required for graduation. Only one student raised her hand; I promptly commented that she was perhaps the smartest woman in the room. Since that first year, more students have raised their hands, but I attribute at least part of that increase to a note in prior students’ outlines to “raise hand when Prof. Harner asks . . . .”
Why the resistance to learning, understanding and appreciating the ethical rules governing lawyers’ conduct? Some students have the ill-conceived notion that the study of ethics is boring. (I actually happen to think the topic, particularly the hard questions in the grey areas, is really interesting, controversial and timely; ever watch an episode of Boston Legal?) But for many students, at least based on my conversations, their lack of enthusiasm for the course stems from the simple belief that they are moral individuals who would never act unethically. It is the old “it will never happen to me” mentality.
Unfortunately, I think individuals, including lawyers and business executives, fall prey to this mentality far too frequently. (For an interesting discussion of similar psychological traps, see here and here.) For example, a lawyer may be a moral individual but the pressure of the practice—client demands, senior partner demands, billables, family obligations, etc.—and even good old human greed can blur the line between right and wrong. Likewise, not all executives who get caught up in corporate scandals or pursue excessive risk are bad people; rather, these individuals often get trapped by the same pressures as lawyers. And the consequences can be devastating for the individual and those around her.
I do not know how we correct this mentality or if we can change this aspect of human nature. For my part, I try sensitize my students to the issue and help them decide what kind of person and lawyer they want to be before they enter the profession. I think the use of peer reporting and whistleblower provisions may help curb some of these human tendencies (in the lawyer context, consider Model Rules of Professional Conduct 8.3 and 1.13), but we need to stay focused on the human side of the problem as we continue to draft and amend rules and regulations to govern lawyers, business executives and others. (This side of the corporate risk management problem was thoughtfully raised in a comment to one of my prior posts. See here.) It is a difficult issue, but one worth tackling.
January 19, 2010 at 9:15 am
Tags: Corporate Law, Legal Ethics
Posted in: Corporate Law, Legal Ethics
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How Far Can Lawyers Go in Criticizing the Court? An International Perspective
posted by Jenia Turner
At the end of May, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid court composed of national and international judges, issued a warning to a defense lawyer for offending the court and obstructing the proceedings. The lawyer was Jacques Verges, a French attorney who has made a career of representing notorious clients and taking on politically charged cases. At the ECCC, he represents Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s former Head of State, who is accused of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes during the horrific era of the Khmer Rouge. Verges was reprimanded for using delay tactics and implying that the court’s judges are corrupt. The decision raises the question of how far an attorney may go in raising questions about the integrity of an international court.
Verges made the remarks during a pretrial hearing concerning his client’s request for release from detention. During the hearing, which the court had postponed twice to accommodate Verges’s schedule, Verges made no comments on the merits of the motion, but instead hinted at the possibility of the tribunal’s corruption:
…Firstly, I shall be silent because it is not for me to be more concerned about your honour than you yourselves are. If you consider that corruption should not be discussed, I am not going to force the discussion on you. I shall be silent because I understand your caution in this regard and I think that the presumption of innocence that you sometimes deny the accused may be of some benefit to you. And I shall be silent because the Head of State which hosts you has stated publicly that he wishes you to leave, making of you, in a moral sense, squatters. I shall be silent also because a member of the Government of the country that hosts you stated that you were obsessed only by money, thus confirming the charge-be it grounded or not-of corruption, which blights the tribunal.
In response, the court warned Verges that if he continued along these lines, he would be sanctioned. The court also forwarded a copy of the warning to the Cambodian and French bars.
What makes the situation at the ECCC complicated is that there have been numerous allegations of corruption involving ECCC court staff. These allegations have come from inside staff members, human rights NGOs, and the UN itself, whose Office of Internal Oversight Services investigated allegations of corruption and delivered a report to the Cambodian government implicating specific individuals (the Cambodian government has not revealed or followed up on this report). Both defense attorneys and victims’ attorneys have called on the court to investigate the question further. So far, the allegations focus on kickbacks that ECCC staff members may have paid to Cambodian officials in return for their positions at the court. The allegations appear to implicate only the Cambodian staff and not any of the judges. But motions by other ECCC defense teams have argued that even corruption among court staff could affect the fairness of the trial. As one motion states: “if staff members entrusted with sensitive tasks are willing to engage in graft, those individuals may be equally willing to follow improper instructions, such as the manipulation of evidence to support a preordained political outcome.”
Verges’s comments to the court might be read to stop short of any direct accusation of the judges, but they certainly hint at the possibility of improper motives. Perhaps more relevant for purposes of the warning is that his comments were raised during a hearing on a motion to release his client from detention, distracted from the merits of the motion, and did not appear to be reasonably calculated to advance the legal interests of his client. Trying accused war criminals from the terrible era of the Khmer Rouge remains the ECCC’s primary business. As long as this mandate remains, the ECCC judges cannot allow the trial of every defendant, and every related motion, to be turned into an argument about the court’s own separate problems. ECCC judges were therefore correct to warn him that they would be prepared to take more serious measures to ensure orderly and speedy proceedings.
Still, while Verges’s statements may have justified the warning in this case, the ECCC should be cautious in reprimanding lawyers simply for raising the question of corruption at the court. The issue is too important to the court’s legitimacy, as some of the international judges themselves have acknowledged. It would be unfortunate if the only measure that the court takes in response to allegations of corruption is to reprimand defense attorneys for raising the issue.
July 9, 2009 at 10:43 am
Tags: Corruption, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Jacques Verges, Legal Ethics
Posted in: International & Comparative Law, Legal Ethics
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