Foreward

• Publication year: 2021

Foreward

Patrick Longan

Mercer University School of Law, LONGAN_P@law.mercer.edu

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Foreword

Symposium on Ethics, Professionalism, and the Role of the Attorney General of the United States: Lessons from History

by Patrick E. Longan^*

I. Introduction

In October 2020, Mercer University School of Law hosted the 21^st Annual Georgia Symposium on Legal Ethics and Professionalism. The symposium brought together scholars and distinguished guests to discuss the proper role of the Attorney General of the United States and related lessons that we may learn from history. In addition to the authors of the articles in this volume of the Mercer Law Review, we were honored to have with us as commentators The Honorable William S. Duffey, Jr., retired United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, Doc Schneider, senior partner at King & Spalding, and Rod Rosenstein, partner at King & Spalding and former Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

Mercer Law School held the first Georgia Symposium on Professionalism and Ethics in 2001, and since then the symposium has rotated on a yearly basis among Mercer, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Emory University. The funding for the symposia comes from endowments of $250,000 that went to each of these four schools as a result of the settlement of claims of litigation misconduct in a case before United States District Judge Hugh Lawson

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of the Middle District of Georgia. We have Judge Lawson to thank for the ingenuity to suggest using funds that were paid as part of the resolution of allegations of unethical conduct to endow symposia about legal ethics and professionalism. Over the years, the symposia have covered many different topics. In the ones sponsored by Mercer, we have dealt with the ethics of settlement negotiations, ethics and professionalism in the digital age, and the disclosure obligations of prosecutors, among other topics.¹

No topic we have chosen, however, is as timely or as important as the issues that surround ethics and professionalism as those concepts apply to the discharge of the responsibilities of the Attorney General of the United States. The recent tenure of William Barr as Attorney General was, to put it mildly, controversial.² But the proper role of the Attorney General has been an issue periodically throughout the history of the United States.³ Our premise in choosing this topic for this year's symposium is that, by learning about the...