Corrupting legislation and corrupting trials violate the same ethical duty

Evidence

Furthermore lawyers of high standing have often failed to apply in connection with professional work before the legislature or city council a rule of ethics which they would deem imperative in practice before the court. Lawyers who would indignantly retire from a court case in the justice of which they believed, if they had reason to think that a juror had been bribed or a witness had been suborned by their client, are content to serve their client by honest arguments before a legislative committee although they have as great reason to think that their client has bribed members of the legislature or corrupted public opinion. It is this confusion of ethical ideas which has prevented the bar from taking at the present time the position which it held formerly as a brake upon democracy, and which I believe it must take again before the serious questions now before us can be solved. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 268

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the Legal Systems course thread on legal reasoning versus institutional role — the bar-as-brake-on-democracy claim gives a striking historical self-image of lawyers. — connects to: Buying a legislator’s vote is legitimate for voters but not for paid lawyers — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 300; Court advocacy assumes roughly matched adversaries to reach justice — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 262
• QUESTION: “Brake upon democracy” is a loaded phrase — worth chasing how 1905 lawyers conceived the bar’s legitimate anti-majoritarian function.