Abstract
For many, the exemplars of the unethical government lawyer are Attorney General John Mitchell and Counsel to the President John Dean, both of whom were sent to prison as a result of their excessively loyal service to President Nixon. Every attorney should easily acknowledge both that a lawyer has a high ethical duty of loyalty to his client and that this duty does not excuse, let alone require, the commission of crimes. Extreme examples like Mitchell and Dean can tempt us with the diametrically extreme view articulated by Attorney General Edward Bates: [T]he office I hold is not properly political, but strictly legal; and it is my duty, above all other ministers of state, to uphold the law and to resist all encroachment, from whatever quarter, of mere will and power.' Such vacuous pieties did not prevent Bates from adopting an exceedingly generous view of President Lincoln's legal authority when political circumstances so demanded,2 and it may well be doubted whether any government lawyer holding a political appointment has ever truly treated his office as completely apolitical.
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