I do solemnly swear
Subtitle: the moral obligations of legal officials
By: Stephen Sheppard.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Cambridge [UK]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780521513685; 9780521735087
Subjects: Legal ethics -- United States; Law -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States; Law and ethics; Administrative responsibility -- United States
Description: "What should the people expect from their legal officials? This book asks whether officials can be moral and still follow the law, answering that the law requires them to do so. It revives the idea of the good official -- the good lawyer, the good judge, the good president, the good legislator -- that guided Cicero and Washington and that we seem to have forgotten. Based on stories and law cases from America's founding to the present, this book examines what is good and right in law and why officials must care. This overview of official duties, from oaths to the law itself, explains how morals and law work together to create freedom and justice, and it provides useful maxims to argue for the right answer in hard cases. Important for scholars but useful for lawyers and readable by anybody, this book explains how American law ought to work." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Law and office; title: The stakes : the interests of others in official actions; title: Officials' obligations arise from more than the law alone; title: The moral obligations of legal officials; title: Patterns of relationship between legal and moral obligations.