Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T21:07:29.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hanging Out a Shingle: The Public and Private Services of Professionals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Barry Hoffmaster
Get access

Extract

Virtually all elements of society seem, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, to be beset by economic importunity. Other values are eclipsed by the proclaimed necessity to run every activity and organization as a business and the relentless commercialization of human life and politics. Nowhere is this economic inexorability more apparent than in professional sports, where ‘professional’ does not refer to a person whose advanced education and cultivated skills are used to serve others, but simply designates someone who makes a living as an athlete. Indeed, the distinction between professional and amateur, once so robust that it was used to strip medals from athletes who took money, has become obsolete. Nowadays athletes lose medals only when they are caught taking drugs. Salaries in professional sports have become uncoupled from performance, as familiar headlines about journeyman major league baseball players signing million dollar contracts demonstrate. Legitimate ‘stars’ (or ‘superstars’ as they have come to be known as the rhetoric inflates accordingly) demand to renegotiate their contracts when they have had an impressive year but are silent when their numbers fall. And virtually every piece of visible attire an athlete wears is marketed, by name or by number.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 127 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. “Athletes turn entertainers,” The Nation (Bangkok), Dec. 8, 1995 at Al7 (Associated Press).

2. One television critic identifies the economic forces behind the federal government’s substantial reduction of the budget of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

The political slaughter of our only national public broadcasting service represents…a formal surrender to the inexorable forces of the marketplace, which is becoming increasingly monopolized by transnational corporations who care for nothing but the well-being of their bottom line. In contrast, most of the folks who chose to work for CBC Radio and Television did so from a sense of mission, a sense that there was more purpose to broadcasting than selling soap or mutual funds.

Cuff, J.H., “The slaughter of the CBC: to be continued,” Globe and Mail, Dec. 30, 1995 at C15.Google Scholar

3. Regents Moore v.of the Univ. of Cal., 793 P.2d 479 (Cal. 1990), at 514.

4. Ibid.

5. The traditional goals of universities also are jeopardized as academe follows the lead of corporations in ‘restructuring’ and ‘downsizing’ the work force. At Yale University, for example, graduate students, whose prospects of obtaining tenure-track teaching positions after receiving a Ph.D. are dim, have gone on strike in an attempt to form a union. Such labor unrest should be no surprise: “…[A]s universities trim departments and substitute cheaper part-time labor for full professors, the industrial union model is finding an audience among students who see ivory towers acting more like corporate headquarters.” Young academics are likely to become campus “nomads,” wandering from one “piece-work” teaching contract to another; they could be “…trapped in their lower status, while the nature of university teaching itself changes…” Judson, G., “Yale Student Strike Points to Decline in Tenured Jobs,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 1996 atB9.Google Scholar

6. This paragraph comes from Pilsk, W.E., “The Modern Practice of Law: Assessing Change” (1988)41 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 677 at 678.Google Scholar

7. Kennedy, R., “Groundbreaking Law Firm Shifts Its Focus to Personal-Injury Cases,” New York Times, May 12, 1995 Google Scholar at A16. All the information in this paragraph comes from this article.

8. Pilsk, supra note 6 at 679-80.

9. Ibid, at 680.

10. Brint, S., In an Age of Experts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) at 1–2.Google Scholar

11. Downs, A., “The Public Interest: Its Meaning in a Democracy” (1962) 29 Social Research 1 at 1–2.Google Scholar

12. Andrews, C.S., “The Law—A Business or a Profession?“ (1907-08) 17 Yale L.J. 602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Ibid, at 605.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid, at 609.

17. Ibid.

18. Meier, B., “Fistfuls of Coupons” (May 26, 1995) New York Times at CI.Google Scholar

19. Jensen, R.H., “Incursion Into Realm of Confidential Legal Fees Reaches a Broader Stage” (May 26, 1995) New York Times at A12.Google Scholar

20. Henriques, D.B., “Top Business Court Under Fire” (May 23, 1995) New York Times at CI.Google Scholar

21. Elliott, S., “Maurice Saatchi and Cordiant Call a Truce,” (May 23, 1995) New York Times at C1.Google Scholar

22. Ibid.

23. May, W.F., “The Beleaguered Rulers: The Public Obligation of the Professional“ (1992) 2 Kennedy Institute of Ethics J. 25at 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Ibid, at 29.

25. Ibid, at 37.

26. Reich, R.B., “How to Avoid These Layoffs?” (Jan. 4, 1996) New York Times at A13.Google Scholar

27. Ibid.

28. Fuller, L.L., The Morality of Law, rev’d. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

29. Jacobs, J., Systems of Survival (New York: Random House, 1992).Google Scholar

30. Ibid. at 37.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid. at 81.

33. Ibid. at 80.

34. Ibid. at 19.

35. Ibid. at 115.

36. Ibid.

37. Kant, I., Fundamental Principles of the Melaphysic of Morals, trans. Abbott, T.K. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1949) at 15 Google Scholar (originally published in 1785).

38. Ibid.

39. Taylor, C., Philosophy and the Human Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)at 96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Achebe, C., Things Fall Apart (Oxford: Heinemann, 1958) at 118.Google Scholar

41. Otvos, M., “Why I’m Leaving Law” (Feb., 1992) Canadian Lawyer 12.Google Scholar

42. Ibid, at 13.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Wasserstrom, R., “Lawyers as Professionals: Some Moral Issues” (1975) 5 Human Rights 1 at 15.Google Scholar

47. Ibid, at 13.

48. Ibid.

49. Otvos, supra note 41 at 15.

50. McWhinney, I.R., “Why We Need a New Clinical Method” in Stewart, M., el al., Patient-Centered Medicine (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995) at 10.Google Scholar

51. Maclntyre, A., After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) at 176.Google Scholar

52. May, supra note 23 at 28.

53. Pincoffs, E.L., Quandaries and Virtues (Lawrence, KS: Univeršity Press of Kansas, 1986) at 13–36.Google Scholar