I do solemnly swear : the moral obligations of legal officials / Stephen Michael Sheppard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheppard, Steve, 1963- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Legal ethics--United States.

Legal ethics.

Administrative responsibility.

Law--Moral and ethical aspects.

Law.

United States.

Law--Moral and ethical aspects--United States.

Law and ethics.

Administrative responsibility--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxviii, 276 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

System Details:

text file

PDF

Summary:

What should the people expect from their legal officials? This book asks whether officials can be moral and still follow the law, answering that the law requires them to do so. It revives the idea of the good official - the good lawyer, the good judge, the good president, the good legislator - that guided Cicero and Washington and that we seem to have forgotten. Based on stories and law cases from America's founding to the present, this book examines what is good and right in law and why officials must care. This overview of official duties, from oaths to the law itself, explains how morals and law work together to create freedom and justice, and it provides useful maxims to argue for the right answer in hard cases. Important for scholars but useful for lawyers and readable by anybody, this book explains how American law ought to work.

Contents:

Law and office

The stakes : the interests of others in official actions

Officials' obligations arise from more than the law alone

The moral obligations of legal officials

Patterns of relationship between legal and moral obligations

Breaching obligations

Tools for the trade : maxims and fallacies.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9780511626678

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.