Hazard on the Moral Position of Advocates

Geoff Hazard has co-authored an article with Professor Dana Remus (University of New Hampshire) called, "Advocacy Revalued," 159 U. Pa. L. Rev. 751 (2011). Here is the abstract:

A central and ongoing debate among legall ethics scholars addresses the moral positioning of adversarial advocacy. Most participants in this debate focus on the structure of our legal system and the constituent role of the lawyer-advocate. Many are highly critical, arguing that the core structure of adversarial advocacy is the root cause of many instances of lawyer misconduct. In this Article, we argue that these scholars' focuses are misguided. Through reflection on Artistotle's treatise, Rhetoric, we defend advocacy in our legal system's litigation process as ethically positive and as pivotal to fair and effective dispute resolution. We recognize that advocacy can, and sometimes does, involve improper and unethical use of adversarial techniques, but we demonstrate that these are problems of practice and not of structure and should be addressed as such.