Newton, MA—Boston College Law School is pleased to announce the new Second Edition of Lawyers and Fundamental Moral Responsibility by BC Law professors Daniel R. Coquillette, R. Michael Cassidy and Judith A. McMorrow.

First published in 1995, Lawyers and Fundamental Moral Responsibility (Lexis Publishing/Matthew Bender, July 2010) has been heavily revised to discuss the most relevant ethical problems in today’s world, including terrorism, national security, and abuse of government power.The Second Edition is also reorganized to assist students to better appreciate philosophical theories underpinning discourse about ethics and attorney conduct.

The materials in Lawyers and Fundamental Moral Responsibility are organized around specific problems designed to encourage and focus class discussions. There are two other inherent organizing principles of the materials of the book. First, the philosophical materials are in the rough order in which the ideas themselves evolved in the history of philosophy. There also is a structure based on the topics of ethical philosophy itself.

Other improvements to the new edition include a streamlined approach to make the materials more user friendly for teachers and students, new chapters exploring virtue ethics, casuistry, pragmatism, moral realism and organizational impediments to ethical judgment; and expanded discussion problems at end of each chapter, with emphasis on current legal and political controversies such as OLC Torture Memoranda, Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and high profile instances of prosecutorial misconduct.