Does teaching ethics help to create ethical lawyers?
I don’t think ethics training makes people better; there is no direct relationship between intellectual thought and ethical behavior. If there were, moral philosophers would be better people than others, but in fact they are not better. The same is true for priests, rabbis and imams. The goal of intellectual work in these fields is to understand what our practices are, to interpret what we have. I am trying to show students what they are doing when they are lawyering; to make them more reflective. But they are going to have to be self-disciplined and morally creative on their own; this is not something you can teach. What drew you to the philosophy of law? I’ve always been intrigued by how institutions mange to sustain social order in the face of conflicts. The paradox is that the best way to achieve a stable society is not to repress conflict but to invite and to channel it. The most stable societies in the world are not repressive. Instead, they give social conflict avenues of expres
