Judicial Ethics

My role in this symposium is a modest one: it is to clear thering for the feature fight of the program between Dean Brownand Professor Hartman. I am to sweep away some of the rubbishin the ring that often gets in the way of a clean battle on issues ofethics. I think the most serious rubbish that needs to be sweptaway is the widely prevailing notion that ethics is something offin the clouds, or off in some never-never land of Utopia, somethinguncertain and subjective, whereas the law is something that isvery definite, clear, hard, here and now. Of course, if that weretrue, there would be no point in trying to apply ethical doctrinesto actual cases