25. Should Lawyers be Fighting for a Cause? With Alex Batesmith

Ethics Untangled

Alex Batesmith has had a fascinating career. After beginning as a criminal barrister in Leeds, he went on to work as a United Nations prosecutor in Cambodia and Kosovo, working on cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. He's now a legal scholar working at Leeds University, and has been researching the values and motivations of international criminal lawyers. In this conversation we discussed the idea of 'cause lawyering'. Cause lawyers are lawyers who practice law primarily because of their moral, political or ideological commitments. An example of someone who has arguably been a cause lawyer is the UK's new Prime Minister Kier Starmer, whose previous career as a human rights lawyer appears to have been motivated at least partly by some broader moral commitments, including opposition to the death penalty for example. It's interesting to consider how this outlook complicates the ethical framework under which lawyers operate, which traditionally balances duties to the client with duties to the court, and to the rule of law.
Alex has published an article on the same topic in the Journal of International Criminal Justice, which can be accessed here:
He also recommended this article by Anna-Maria Marshall and Daniel Crocker Hale.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
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