I Do Solemnly Swear: The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials

Steve Sheppard

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511626678

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.

'… interesting, readable and richly illustrated …'

Source: Ecclesiastical Law Journal

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I Do Solemnly Swear

The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-vi

Contents
pp vii-xiv

Preface: Moral Officials, Retail Justice, and Three Caveats
pp xv-xxvi

Acknowledgments
pp xxvii-xxviii

Introduction: Seven Questions about What Is Fit for an Official to Do
pp 1-7

1 - Law and Office
pp 8-48

2 - The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
pp 49-101

3 - Officials' Obligations Arise from More Than the Law Alone
pp 102-123

4 - The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials
pp 124-178

5 - Patterns of Relationship between Legal and Moral Obligations
pp 179-202

6 - Breaching Obligations
pp 203-225

7 - Tools for the Trade: Maxims and Fallacies
pp 226-263

Epilogue: What the Official Ought to Do: Law and Justice
pp 264-266

Appendix: Taxonomy of Headings: The Lawes and Libertyes of Massachusetts (Discussed in Chapter 1)
pp 267-270

Index
pp 271-276

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I Do Solemnly Swear

The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials

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