Does the Ethos of Law Erode? Lawyers’ Professional Practices, Self-Understanding and Ethics at Work
通过访谈德语区律师，挑战了法律职业精神被侵蚀的说法，揭示了专业实践、身份认同与伦理的复杂性和偶然性，对商业伦理和职业伦理研究有启示。
Abstract Furthering an integrative ethics-as-practice framework, this paper explores the professional practices, self-understanding and ethics of lawyers working in the Germanic legal context. Existing studies of the legal profession often argue that changing conditions in law have led to a ‘constrained morality’ and an ‘erosion of ethos’ among lawyers. While the current study acknowledges shifts in lawyers’ ethos, it challenges the claim of an erosion or ‘lack’ of morality. The narratives of the interviewed practitioners rather suggest that socio-discursively constituted professional practices, identity and ethics are complex and contingent. Focusing on the ‘moral rules in use’ and how lawyers negotiate ethical matters ‘from within’ evokes ongoing ambiguities and struggles inscribed in ethical (self-)positions, pointing, as such, to the limits of assessing lawyers’ conduct as ‘ethical’ or ‘unethical’. The study thereby extends both normative and practice-based business and professional ethics studies.