The Ethics of Global Justice Lawyering

Abstract

In the last two decades, as states, international institutions, and private donors invested heavily in the rule of law and human rights, lawyers gained a prominent place in transnational projects to reform domestic laws and institutions. As the U.S. legal profession moves into this global arena, we should pause to consider the ethical questions raised by the practices of "global justice lawyering." Broadly conceived, two questions govern this inquiry: (1) What ethical justifications support the U.S. lawyer's role in reforming the laws and political institutions of other societies? (2) Even if we can justify this role in theory, can we justify the particular practices of global justice lawyers? To answer the first question, I draw on the ethical doctrine of cosmopolitanism, as well as the U.S. legal profession's commitments to the rule of law and reformative justice, to conclude that there are strong ethical reasons to promote global justice. These reasons do not, however, justify promotion by any means. This is the dilemma of the cosmopolitan lawyer: the cosmopolitan project of global justice - although morally justified in theory - presents ethical questions in practice. In the final section of the Article, I suggest that to avoid ethical concerns, global justice lawyers must reject an "import" approach to law, in which foreign laws and institutions are transplanted into new environments, in favor of a normative approach to the processes of lawmaking.