CPR Member Scholar Flatt Launches Important Discussion on Legal Ethics and Climate
It's not just wildfires in Australia or our rapidly warming oceans (to the tune of five Hiroshima bombs every second). Climate change affects every aspect of our world, and it's forcing us reevaluate all of the human institutions we've built up over years, decades, and centuries. One such institution that CPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt has begun investigating is the legal profession itself.
Members of the legal profession are bound by a code of professional ethics that applies in the state in which they practice, and this code spells out their professional responsibilities to their clients, to the legal system, and to broader society. As Flatt explains in an article in the current issue of the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Forum, it's time to review these rules of professional responsibility through the lens of climate change. In particular, his article looks at the climate implications of Rule 1.6 from the American Bar Association's (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Ethics, which governs attorney-client confidentiality. (Most states have adopted or based their respective legal codes on the ABA's Model Rules.)
Section (b) of Rule 1.6 outlines several exceptions to the general rule of confidentiality. Flatt argues that one of these …
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