Research Handbook on the Sociology of Legal Ethics

Situating legal ethics in relation to classical sociology of law themes, this astute Research Handbook investigates ethics as a contested set of professional rules designed to protect clients and serve the public, revealing how they operate in action to shape lawyers’ relation to state and market power.

Expert authors discuss how legal ethics can reflect and legitimate structural inequalities in the legal profession and wider society, exploring their institutionalization within specific social and political contexts. They assess the consequences of ethics enforcement on stratification and access to justice, as well as the influence of ethics in larger conflicts over democracy, authoritarianism, and the rule of law. The Research Handbook presents a broad range of global perspectives through empirical studies covering the institutionalization of legal ethics in South Africa, feminist lawyering in Turkey, the ethics of Christian lawyers in Australia, and the development of professional standards in European courts, among others. Based on this innovative work, the book provides a framework for understanding the sociology of legal ethics that distinguishes it from other research in the field by placing the social role of ethical rules and their enforcement at the centre of study.

Scholars and students of law and society, legal ethics, sociology and sociological theory will greatly benefit from this compelling Research Handbook. Providing empirical insights into how lawyers understand and practice ethics in their daily work lives, and how ethics can serve to check abuses of government power, it is also an essential resource for practitioners and policymakers.