Restoring the Public’s Faith: Character Education and the Supreme Court

Authors

Benjamin RigneyFollow

First Page

296

Date Created

9-26-2024

Publisher

St. Mary's University School of Law

Editor

Alyssa Boggs

Last Page

324

Abstract

The current news cycle is full of reports on the alleged ethical scandals rocking the Supreme Court. A significant result of these ethical failures is rapidly declining public trust in the Supreme Court as an institution, which in turn negatively impacts the public’s trust in the entire legal system. The role of judicial ethics is fundamental to the American legal system as illustrated in Charles Geyh’s article, The Architecture of Judicial Ethics, published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Amanda Frost’s article, Judicial Ethics and Supreme Court Exceptionalism, published in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. However, those articles fail to address the role that character education can play in reforming the Supreme Court and reviving public trust in the legal system.

This Article illustrates the power of character education as a tool for systemic reform and uses the Supreme Court as a model for applying character education strategies. These character strategies have a broader reach than just the Supreme Court, but this Article uses the Supreme Court to illustrate how to implement character education into the legal context. Legal scholarship currently has a dearth of information regarding the role of character education in the legal industry. This Article outlines a unique solution to the substantial, timely, and important issue of the ethical lapses in the United States Supreme Court.

Recommended Citation

Benjamin Rigney, Restoring the Public’s Faith: Character Education and the Supreme Court, 14 St. Mary's J. on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 296 (2024).
Available at: https://commons.stmarytx.edu/lmej/vol14/iss2/5