ABSTRACT This article explores how disciplinary sanctions imposed on legal professionals can be given a coherent moral justification. Drawing inspiration from the philosophy of criminal law, it develops a modified form of legal moralism based on role morality rather than common morality. The theory is intended to provide disciplinary authorities with normative guidance on what may legitimately be defined as a disciplinary offence, as well as limits on what must not be classified as such. Four challenges that any plausible version of legal moralism must meet are identified and addressed. The article argues that legal moralism, traditionally grounded in a deontological conception of morality, can be coherently connected with consequentialist reasoning, represented here by utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can serve as its ultimate justification. Furthermore, the paper proposes a version of legal moralism that rests on a consequentialist conception of morality. In this case, however, utilitarians have little reason to prefer such an approach over the direct application of the principle of utility. The article concludes that legal moralism, properly reconstructed, provides a philosophically robust foundation for understanding and justifying disciplinary sanctions.

ABSTRACT This study examines challenges and solutions in legal writing within Saudi Arabia's dual legal system, where Sharia law intersects with international legal norms. Using a qualitative interpretive design, data were collected from 10 undergraduate and postgraduate law students through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Thematic analysis identified key issues, including language barriers, curriculum gaps, limited feedback, and the role of technology in legal writing instruction. A major gap in the literature is the limited focus on how Sharia-compliant writing aligns with international legal standards. This study addresses this gap by highlighting difficulties in reconciling principles such as the prohibition of riba and gharar with global legal frameworks. It also emphasizes challenges in bilingual legal writing, given the use of Arabic in Sharia and English in international law, alongside limited bilingual resources. The findings stress the need for practice-oriented instruction, improved feedback, and culturally responsive pedagogy that aligns with both Islamic values and international expectations. The study contributes practical recommendations for curriculum development, bilingual resources, and teaching strategies to enhance legal writing education in Saudi Arabia. These insights support educators and policymakers in strengthening the quality and global relevance of Saudi legal education.

ABSTRACT The Dutch childcare benefits scandal, the British Post Office scandal, and the Australian Robodebt scandal led to widespread harm: debt and bankruptcy, imprisonment, severe poverty, health and mental problems, emotional distress, family separations, and, in some instances, even loss of life. In these scandals, legal professionals played a key enabling role, either through direct or indirect involvement. Hence, a central question raised by these scandals is: Where were the legal professionals? Should they not have acted differently and done more to protect citizens from these injustices, especially given that their professional role is so intimately linked to the ideals of the rule of law, justice, liberty, and equality? This article uses the lens of virtue ethics to understand the failures of legal professionals in these mass injustices and to explore how similar failures can be prevented in the future. However, as these scandals are not isolated anomalies but manifestations of systemic failures in Western justice systems, this article not only distils key lessons from virtue ethics. Grounded in the insights these scandals offer, it also formulates a research agenda for a more realistic, citizen-oriented, virtue-ethical approach to legal professionalism by foregrounding the organisational, digital, and relational dimensions of justice systems.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the profound impact of social media on legal reforms and judicial processes, with a particular focus on cognitive biases and the presumption of innocence. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are reshaping public discourse and influencing legal outcomes. This study explores how these platforms challenge fundamental legal principles through rapid information dissemination and public mobilisation. It also examines the tension between media freedom and the right to a fair trial. Using a multifaceted analytical approach – including critical engagement with relevant scholarship, documentary case analysis, and comparative interpretation across legal systems – the article emphasises the dual role of social media as both a catalyst for public opinion shifts and a force that exerts pressure on judicial systems for reform.

ABSTRACT This article examines the professional ethics of environmental lawyers. Drawing on a survey of 126 and 39 interviews, we find that when it comes to attitudes towards legality in general and legality in hierarchical professional contexts, environmental lawyers seem to share the attitudes of other lawyers, as described by previous research. However, environmental lawyers otherwise demonstrated an approach to ethical choices that was remarkable in two ways. First, a notably high proportion expressed a willingness to exploit legal uncertainty for the benefit of clients, even where doing so would override countervailing ethical considerations. Second, while respondents spoke to environmental commitments in their personal lives – in choosing their career, in choices regarding consumption and private lifestyle – environmental considerations were muted in explanations of legal-ethical choices, even where these choices had evident downstream environmental impacts. We suggest that environmental lawyers may demonstrate here the ‘role morality’ (a potential disjunct between private and professional moralities) that scholars have found at play in other parts of the profession. We also reflect on whether these lawyers’ pervasive exposure to legal uncertainty in the polycentric context of environmental law, combined with a misconceived (legally incorrect) client-primacy approach to lawyering, may account for their distinctive approach.

ABSTRACT Legal scholars are increasingly asked to respect research ethics rules, in particular those concerning conflicts of interest, following a trend begun in social sciences after its crises of replication. However, whereas empirical science needs trust, because it rests on potentially falsifiable data, doctrinal legal scholarship consists of arguments which cannot be faked. It is all on the page. The quality of legal scholarship is served by encouraging readers to engage with what is written as robustly as possible, rather than to consider the integrity of the person who wrote it. The ad hominem path moreover leads to incoherent distinctions between people committed to a view for financial or career reasons, and those committed for ideological ones. Both can narrow the mind of the writer and reduce the quality of their output (although the claim that a good argument cannot be made for payment is a surprising one to hear from lawyers). However, the better response is not to try and get inside the author’s motivations, but to read their words and challenge them. Rules on scholarly conflicts of interests are a distraction from the necessary sceptical and robust engagement with texts.

‘Are There Causes and Clients Lawyers Should Not Represent?’ This Special Issue centres around a paper Richard L. Abel first presented at a session of the Working Group for Comparative Studies of Legal Professions meeting in Coimbra, Portugal in July 2022, in which he asks and addresses this question. Subsequently, a panel of scholars from both common and civil law jurisdictions responded to the paper at the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law conference in Lund, Sweden in September 2023, where the idea for this Special Issue arose. Our aim with this Special Issue is to open a broader debate on the ethics of client selection. <br/><br/>In his paper, Abel challenges the traditional notion of lawyers' moral non-accountability for their clients and causes rooted in liberal pluralism. He argues that the profession must confront its role in exacerbating three existential crises: climate change, growing inequality and the erosion of liberal democracy. Abel urges lawyers to assess the moral implications of their work, refuse harmful clients and causes and engage in collective action to uphold justice and societal responsibility. He argues that legal ethics must evolve to address these challenges and align the profession with the broader public good. With his paper, Abel speaks to one of the classical topics of legal ethics scholarship, that is, how ordinary morality intersects with professional ethics.<br/><br/>This Special Issue features four articles engaging with Abel’s paper and the wider topic of the ethics of client selection, and concludes with a brief response by Abel. In his paper, W. Bradley Wendel responds by defending a liberal conception of legal ethics, while acknowledging the challenges Abel identifies. Ole Hammerslev examines the challenges of operationalising ethical demands in the legal profession, particularly concerning climate change. Rather than expanding on the critique of the role of lawyers in the existential crises the world is facing today, Iris van Domselaar focuses in her reply on the implications for philosophical legal ethicists. Robert Barrington, Guy Beringer and Georgia Garrod’s paper reports on the work done by a Task Force consisting of lawyers, academics and civil society representatives, that is examining the ethical dilemmas faced by UK law firms representing clients who profit from kleptocracy and large-scale corruption. The Special Issue concludes with a response by Abel to the four papers, in which he emphasises the urgency of the ethics of client selection by pointing to the political context in which the world, and more specifically, the United States, finds itself as this Special Issue goes to press. <br/><br/><br/>Tamara Butter and Trevor Clark<br/>Co-Editors<br/><br/>

ABSTRACT Richard Abel’s extensive body of work embodies a deep concern for the well-being of the law and a genuine commitment to its underlying values. His paper, ‘Are There Causes and Clients Lawyers Should Not Represent?’, confronts the urgent and troubling reality that lawyers play a crucial role in facilitating the existential crises we are facing: the climate crisis, extreme socio-economic inequality, and the erosion of liberal democracy. The paper can be read as a genuine cri de cœur, calling for an urgent reconsideration of the current role of lawyers. This reply aims to honour Abel’s cri de cœur. However, rather than contributing to the critique of the role of lawyers in the existential crises, it will focus on the implications for philosophical legal ethics. It interprets his argument as offering a compelling reason to adopt a reflective stance on the practice of philosophical legal ethics. Thus, this paper shifts the focus from ‘them,’ the lawyers and regulators, to ‘us,’ the philosophical legal ethicists.