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The Ethical Health Lawyer: An Empirical Assessment of Moral Decision Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Joshua E. Perry ,
Ilene N. Moore ,
Bruce Barry ,
Ellen Wright Clayton  and
Amanda R. Carrico
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Extract

The empirical literature exploring lawyers and their moral decision making is limited despite the “crisis” of unethical and unprofessional behavior in the bar that has been well documented for over a decade. In particular we are unaware of any empirical studies that investigate the moral landscape of the health lawyer’s practice. In an effort to address this gap in the literature, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University designed an empirical study to gather preliminary evidence regarding the moral reasoning of health care attorneys. The primary research question was how health lawyers respond when they encounter ethical or moral dilemmas in their practice for which the law fails to offer a bright-line solution. In exploring this question, we sought to understand better what motivations or influences guide action when health lawyers confront ethical quandaries, and whether there are specific differences, e.g., gender, experience, or religiosity, that are associated with specific responses to situations testing ethical or moral boundaries.

Type
Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , Fall 2009 , pp. 461 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2009

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References

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