The Role of Personal Values in Professional Decisionmaking

Abstract

The 1908 Canons of Professional Ethics directed lawyerd to “obey [their] own conscience,” but it is open to question whether the legal profession’s contemporary norms assign a leading role to lawyers’ personal values or merely a bit part. The legal literature addresses this question only peripherally. This article responds by examining in detail how the legal profession’s norms both accommodate and limit lawyers’ reliance on their own moral and religious understandings. In so doing, it challenges both those who assume that personal and professional values generally can be integrated and those who assume that professional norms eclipse personal conscience.