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- Title
The Usage of What Country: A Critical Analysis of Legal Ethics in Transnational Legal Practice.
- Authors
Arjona, César S.
- Abstract
This article maintains that the standard conception of legal ethics – the so-called 'theory of amorality' – is highly dependent on context and cannot be consistently applied to transnational legal practice. After defining in some detail the basic tenets of the standard conception, I identify its main assumptions, namely, (i) that a legal relation is an agency relation in which both lawyer and client are individual moral agents, (ii) that such relation is connected to a litigation process, and (iii) that such relation takes place within the framework of a decently well-functioning rule of law system. Using as a paradigmatic example the BTC pipeline case– a set of contracts and international treaties signed by a consortium of private companies and several sovereign states during the first decade of the 21st century to regulate the building and operation of a transnational oil pipeline – I analyze one by one these three assumptions to conclude that they are at the very least highly problematic in the context of global legal practice. Additionally, I consider the counter-argument that a lawyer who moves beyond the standard conception is actually usurping the role of the judge, an argument that loses much of its appeal on the transnational context. In a brief concluding remark I inscribe these problems within the more general post-Westphalian paradigm shift in law and jurisprudence.
- Subjects
LEGAL ethics; PRACTICE of law; LEGAL professions; ACTIONS &; defenses (Law); RULE of law; INTERNATIONAL law
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence, 2019, Vol 32, Issue 2, p259
- ISSN
0841-8209
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/cjlj.2019.15