{"id":1838,"date":"2026-04-14T08:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/?page_id=1838"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T12:54:12","slug":"ross-moral-intuitionism-and-the-role-differentiated-amorality-of-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/in-print\/volume-38-issue-4-fall-2025\/ross-moral-intuitionism-and-the-role-differentiated-amorality-of-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Ross, Moral Intuitionism, and the Role-Differentiated Amorality of Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This Note examines a famous question posed by Charles Fried in 1976, \u201cCan a good lawyer be a good person?\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Fried, along with Richard Wasserstrom, launched a sub-discipline of legal ethics called philosophical legal ethics.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Philosophical legal ethics examines the relationship between the \u201cstandard conception\u201d of a lawyer\u2019s role and \u201cordinary\u201d or \u201ccommon\u201d morality.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The standard conception depicts a lawyer\u2019s role as a partisan advocate for her client, maintaining neutrality and not being held responsible for the morality of her client\u2019s ends.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some legal ethicists like Wasserstrom hold that lawyers acting under the standard conception diverge from ordinary morality.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This Note rejects this line of argument. It begins by presenting Wasserstrom\u2019s argument for the amoral nature of the role of a lawyer. It then considers a moral theory known as intuitionism proposed by W.D. Ross and further explains what makes this theory attractive. Finally, it argues that if we adopt intuitionism in understanding ordinary morality, the standard conception of a lawyer\u2019s role does not render them detached from common moral principles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Examining legal ethics through the lens of philosophy is important because, as David Luban puts it, \u201c[t]he study of legal ethics is part of the study of ethics, and the study of ethics is part of philosophy.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Moral philosophy is not only valuable for resolving specific ethical dilemmas that lawyers may encounter. It also prompts us to consider the meta-ethical question of whether the rules governing lawyers\u2019 ethics are themselves ethical. Luban, however, observes that \u201conly a handful of philosophically informed books and articles on lawyers\u2019 ethics exist.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Therefore, it is crucial to provide a philosophical analysis of the relationship between a lawyer\u2019s role and ordinary morality, a matter fundamentally grounded in philosophy, moral or political.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2026\/04\/GT-GJLE250070.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Note examines a famous question posed by Charles Fried in 1976, \u201cCan a good lawyer be a good person?\u201d Fried, along with Richard Wasserstrom, launched a sub-discipline of legal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14207,"featured_media":0,"parent":1755,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1838","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1838\/revisions\/1840"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}