Race Ethics: Colorblind Formalism and Color-Coded Pragmatism in Lawyer Regulation
Author | Anthony V. Alfieri |
Position | Dean's Distinguished Scholar, Professor of Law, and Director, Center for Ethics and Public Service, University of Miami School of Law |
Pages | 353-410 |
ARTICLES
Race Ethics: Colorblind Formalism and
Color-Coded Pragmatism in Lawyer Regulation
ANTHONY V. ALFIERI*
ABSTRACT
The recent, high-profile civil and criminal trials held in the aftermath of the
George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murders, the Kyle Rittenhouse killings, and
the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally violence renew debate over race,
representation, and ethics in the U.S. civil and criminal justice systems. For
civil rights lawyers, prosecutors, and criminal defense attorneys, neither the
progress of post-war civil rights movements and criminal justice reform cam-
paigns nor the advance of Critical Race Theory and social movement scholar-
ship have resolved the debate over the use of race in pretrial, trial, and
appellate advocacy, and in the lawyering process more generally. Spoken in ar-
chetypal tropes, seen in stereotypical images, and heard in stock stories, race
infects the central lawyering roles of advocate and advisor, echoing inside and
outside courthouses and resounding in the rules of professional responsibility
and the norms of professionalism. By turns cast in colorblind, color-coded, and
color-conscious oral, written, and symbolic forms, the meaning of racial iden-
tity, racialized narrative, and racially demarcated community is both con-
structed and contested in the lawyering process and in the regulation of lawyer
conduct.
In prior writings across the fields of civil rights, criminal justice, and
poverty law, I mapped the intersection of race, representation, and ethics
against the contours of the lawyering process, professional regulation, and
* Dean’s Distinguished Scholar, Professor of Law, and Director, Center for Ethics and Public Service,
University of Miami School of Law. © 2023, Anthony V. Alfieri. For their comments and support, I am grateful
to Atinuke Adediran, Deborah Archer, Alina Ball, Paul Butler, Sergio Campos, John Cannon, Susan Carle,
Charlton Copeland, Scott Cummings, Andrew Elmore, Sheila Foster, Ellen Grant, Adrian Barker Grant-Alfieri,
Amelia Hope Grant-Alfieri, Bruce Green, Irene Joe, Donna Lee, Samuel Levine, Peter Margulies, Rick
Marsico, Veronica Martinez, JoNel Newman, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Russell Pearce, Alex Rundlet, Janet
Sabel, Jane Spinak, Scott Sundby, Paul Tremblay, and the participants in the Stephen Ellmann Clinical Theory
Workshop. I also wish to thank Theo de Sa-Kaye, Gabrielle Thomas, Sean Werkheiser, and Robin Schard for
their research assistance, and the editors of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, especially Brooke Brimo,
Chibunkem Ezenekwe, Justin Moyer, and Nathan Winshall, for their commitment and patience.
353
legal education, especially within law school clinics and indigent civil and
criminal justice systems. The purpose of this article is to revisit that body
of writing and to reevaluate the continuing uses and the persisting stigma
harms of race in contemporary civil rights and criminal justice advocacy,
particularly in cases of racial violence. The goal of revisiting and enlarg-
ing this previous work is to grasp more fully how civil rights lawyers, pros-
ecutors, and criminal defense attorneys use race to advantage or
disadvantage Black litigants, victims, jurors, witnesses, and even other
lawyers—and, moreover, how they use ethics rules and standards designed
to regulate racial bias and prejudice to justify their conduct.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
I. THE STANDARD CONCEPTION OF RACE IN THE LAWYERING
PROCESS .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
II. RACE-NEUTRAL FORMALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
A. RACE-NEUTRAL FORMALISM IN PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . 369
B. RACE-NEUTRAL RULE FORMALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
1. COMPETENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
2. DILIGENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
3. COMMUNICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
III. RACE-CODED PRAGMATISM . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
A. RACE-CODED PRAGMATISM IN PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
B. RACE-CODED RULE PRAGMATISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
1. SCOPE OF REPRESENTATION AND ALLOCATION OF AUTHORITY 402
2. ADVISOR . . . . .
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
CONCLUSION . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
354 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LEGAL ETHICS [Vol. 36:353
INTRODUCTION
The recent, high-profile civil and criminal trials held in the aftermath of
the George Floyd
1
and Ahmaud Arbery murders,
2
See generally Richard Fausset, What We Know About the Shooting Death of Ahmaud Arbery, N.Y.
TIMES (Feb. 7, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia.html [https://
perma.cc/9VR9-UDBV]; Christian Powell Sundquist, White Vigilantism and the Racism of Race-
Neutrality, 99 DENV. L. REV. 763, 765–71 (2022); Ahmaud Arbery: A Curated Collection of Links,
MARSHALL PROJECT, https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/8993-ahmaud-arbery [https://perma.
cc/2VPP-DAGC] (last visited Feb. 22, 2023).
the Kyle Rittenhouse kill-
ings,
3
See Liane Jackson, Race to the Bottom: Guns, Vigilantism and Unequal “Justice,” 108 ABA J. 11
(2022); Cynthia Lee, Firearms and Initial Aggressors, 101 N.C. L. REV. 1, 13, 36–40 (2022); Paige Williams,
Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante, NEW YORKER (June 28, 2021), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/
2021/07/05/kyle-rittenhouse-american-vigilante [https://perma.cc/4EYM-QCWN].
and the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally
4
See Neil MacFarquhar, Jury Finds Rally Organizers Responsible for Charlottesville Violence, N.Y.
TIMES (Nov. 23, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/us/charlottesville-rally-verdict.html [https://
perma.cc/DK9U-CECZ]; Neil MacFarquhar, The Charlottesville Rally Civil Trial, Explained, N.Y. TIMES
(Nov. 23, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/charlottesville-rally-trial-explained [https://perma.cc/
B7CY-HCVJ]; Sines v. Kessler, No. 3:17CV00072, 2021 WL 8533299 (W.D. Va. Nov. 23, 2021) (federal jury
verdict awarding plaintiffs $26,004,743 in compensatory and punitive damages).
violence renew
debate over race, representation, and ethics in the U.S. civil and criminal
justice systems.
5
See Anthony V. Alfieri, Race, Legal Representation, and Lawyer Ethics, in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
RACE AND LAW IN THE UNITED STATES (Devon Carbado, Emily Houh & Khiara Bridges eds., 2022), https://
doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190947385.013.22 [https://perma.cc/22BW-UTMR].
For civil rights lawyers, prosecutors, and criminal defense
attorneys, neither the progress of post-war civil rights movements
6
and
criminal justice reform campaigns
7
nor the advance of Critical Race
Theory
8
and social movement scholarship
9
have resolved the debate over
1. See ROBERT SAMUELS & TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, HIS NAME IS GEORGE FLOYD: ONE MAN’S LIFE AND THE
STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL JUSTICE 308–54 (2022).
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. See generally SCOTT L. CUMMINGS, AN EQUAL PLACE : LAWYERS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LOS ANGELES
(2021); KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR, FROM #BLACKLIVESMATTER TO BLACK LIBERATION (2016); Veryl
Pow, Grassroots Movement Lawyering: Insights from the George Floyd Rebellion, 69 UCLA L. REV. 80
(2022).
7. See generally Amna A. Akbar, An Abolitionist Horizon for (Police) Reform, 108 CALIF. L. REV. 1781
(2020); Monica C. Bell, Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement, 126 YALE L.J. 2054
(2017); Thomas Ward Frampton, The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics, 135
HARV. L. REV. 2013 (2022).
8. See generally Montre
´ D. Carodine, Contemporary Issues in Critical Race Theory: The Implications of
Race as Character Evidence in Recent High-Profile Cases, 75 U. PITT. L. REV. 679 (2014); Anne D. Gordon,
Cleaning Up Our Own Houses: Creating Anti-Racist Clinical Programs, 29 CLINICAL L. REV. 49 (2022);
Norrinda Brown Hayat, Freedom Pedagogy: Toward Teaching Antiracist Clinics, 28 CLINICAL L. REV. 149
(2021).
9. Compare Scott L. Cummings, Law and Social Movements: Reimagining the Progressive Canon, 2018
WIS. L. REV. 441, 441 (discussing the construction and critique of the progressive legal canon—“iconic legal
campaigns to advance progressive causes”—in the study of lawyers and social movements), with Amna A.
Akbar, Sameer M. Ashar & Jocelyn Simonson, Movement Law, 73 STAN. L. REV. 821, 821 (2021) (defining
movement law as “an approach to legal scholarship grounded in solidarity, accountability, and engagement
with grassroots organizing and left social movements”), and Betty Hung, Movement Lawyering as Rebellious
Lawyering: Advocating with Humility, Love and Courage, 23 CLINICAL L. REV. 663, 664 (2017) (denoting
2023] RACE ETHICS 355
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