Judicial Ethics

Abstract

My role in this symposium is a modest one: it is to clear the ring for the feature fight of the program between Dean Brown and Professor Hartman. I am to sweep away some of the rubbish in the ring that often gets in the way of a clean battle on issues of ethics. I think the most serious rubbish that needs to be swept away is the widely prevailing notion that ethics is something off in the clouds, or off in some never-never land of Utopia, something uncertain and subjective, whereas the law is something that is very definite, clear, hard, here and now. Of course, if that were true, there would be no point in trying to apply ethical doctrines to actual cases.