This article examines how ethically driven Russian criminal defense lawyers, motivated by professional values and exposure to rights violations, could form a collective force to strengthen professional associations, push for legal reform, and hold law enforcement accountable within a deteriorating democratic system.
Ethics and Professional Responsibility
Crooke (2024), “Frustration and Fidelity: How Public Interest Lawyers Navigate Procedure in the Direct Representation of Asylum Seekers”
This study reveals how public interest lawyers strive to empower asylum seekers in Los Angeles despite facing significant challenges from a restrictive and politicized U.S. immigration system.
Nader (1995), “Lawyers and Law Students as Tools of Democracy”
The passage highlights that the true role of lawyers is to prevent injustice and promote democracy, elevating law from a trade to a profession.
Roznai (2013), “Revolutionary Lawyering? On Lawyers’ Social Responsibilities and Roles during a Democratic Revolution”
The article examines the dual and often conflicting roles of lawyers during revolutions, balancing their duty to uphold legal order with their responsibility to support revolutionary change and help shape new legal systems.
Halliday (1987), Beyond Monopoly: Lawyers, State Crises, and Professional Empowerment
Halliday argues that lawyers use their legal expertise to shape state responses to crises, stabilizing democratic institutions and adapting to political, legal, and fiscal challenges.
Oko (2009), “The Lawyer’s Role in a Contemporary Democracy, Promoting the Rule of Law, Lawyers in Fragile Democracies and the Challenges of Democratic Consolidation: The Nigerian Experience”
In fragile democracies, lawyers must help build and secure democratic institutions, a role best understood through context-specific analysis rather than abstract ideals.
Hutchinson (2008), “In the Public Interest’: The Responsibilities and Rights of Government Lawyers”
This article critiques the default assumption that government lawyers share the same ethical duties as private lawyers and proposes a new framework grounded in a democratic understanding of law and justice.
Rosen (2006), “Lessons on Lawyers, Democracy, and Professional Responsibility”
The article argues that lawyers have a professional responsibility to understand and support democracy, not because it is perfect, but because their role is essential to improving and sustaining it.
Titaev and Shkliaruk (2016), “Investigators in Russia: Who Creates Practice in the Investigation of Criminal Cases”
Analyzes the role of investigators in the Russian criminal justice process.
Goldstein (2022), “The Attorney’s Duty to Democracy: Legal Ethics, Attorney Discipline, and the 2020 Election”
An analysis of the roles that attorneys have played in facilitating democratic backsliding internationally to draw lessons for the American legal ethics regime.