lawyer meaning essay

• IMC Library
• Library Guides

Legal Method, Research and Writing

• Academic Writing in Law
• Legal Research Basics
• Law Database Guides
• Referencing in Law
• Other Research Resources for Law

Email Ettiquette

THE BASIC RULES

• Don't use an unprofessional email address
• Start with a new e-mail
• Include an appropriate subject heading
• Write a salutation
• Write well!  
• Provide context and background information
• Write a clear and concise message
• Sign your name
• Proofread the e-mail
• Allow adequate time for a reply
• Writing Professional Emails More detailed advice about how to write emails to academic staff

Academic Writing and Research in Law

• UTS Guide to Writing in Law A highly recommended helpful and comprehensive guide to writing law papers.
• Monash University Guide to Writing in Law Law writing guide with helpful Q&A's and tips for planning out case argumentation.
• University of Queensland Legal Research Essentials Introduction to Legal Research by The University of Queensland, Australia

Other Help:

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, Summarising The basic differences in how to writes quotes, how to write paraphrases, and how to write summaries of the sources you find.

Basic Rules

Academic and professional legal writing requires you to develop an argument and demonstrate relationships between the ideas you are expressing. 

Therefore, the ability to express yourself clearly and accurately is important.  Here you will find information to help you improve your writing for any purpose in your law degree.

Academic writing in law is:

Academic writing in law does not:   

Steps to Writing a Law Essay

Throughout your law degree, you will be expected to write a range of different texts, including research essays, responses to problem questions, and case notes.

Not matter the type of text you are asked to produce for an assignment, make sure you follow these steps:

• Plan :  read the questions carefully and think about how you will answer it
• Research :  read, read and read! Make use of everything available to you - don't forget the library!
• Make thorough notes : include all important (and relevant) details and quotes and take note of the source. Make sure you organise your notes so as to make the writing task easier
• Write the first draft :  before you start writing your first draft, refer back to your initial plan and make any necessary changes now you have done your research and gathered your notes. 
• Review and edit :  remember to proofread your work!

The IRAC Method

IRAC is an acronym that stands for: Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion. It functions as a methodology for legal analysis and is used as a framework for organising your answer to an essay question in law school.

[ Open All | Close All ]

In legal writing, issues are the core of the essay.

This part of the essay should:

• Identify and state the issue
• Name those involved (plaintiff and defendant) and briefly describe their individual issues
• Work out what body of law may govern the resolution of the issue (e.g. Contract Law)

The rule describes which law applies to the issue. The rule should be stated as a general principle, and not a conclusion to the particular case being briefed.

• Outline the legal principles that will be used to address to the issue
• Source legal principles from cases and legislation

The application is the most important and longest part of your answer. It involves applying the Rule to the facts of the issue and demonstrating how those facts do or do not meet the requirements laid down by the rules. Discuss both sides of the case when possible.

• Explain why the plaintiff's claims are or are not justified
• Identify how the law will be used by the plaintiff and defendant to argue their case
• Use relevant cases and legal principles to support your writing
• Do not try to strengthen your argument by leaving out elements or facts that will hurt it

As with all essays, the conclusion is a statement that identifies your answer to the issue.

• Identify what the result of your argument ir, or what it should be
• State who is liable for what and to what extent
• Consider how the plaintiff and defendant could have acted to avoid this legal issue

Useful Links:

• UWA IRAC Guide This guide from the University of Western Australia offers examples of how the IRAC method can be applied to different cases.
• Law School Survival: The IRAC Method A useful site that presents a detailed outline of the IRAC method as well as skeleton outlines.

Law Writing Media

Additional Resource

Featured Resource

Further Support

Related Guides

Proofreading Tool

• Last Updated: Jan 17, 2024 3:38 PM
• URL: https://top-au.libguides.com/legal-method-research-and-writing

Copyright © 2019 Australian National Institute of Management and Commerce (IMC) Registered Higher Education Provider TEQSA PRV12059 | CRICOS 02491D Top Education Group Ltd ACN 098 139 176 trading as Australian National Institute of Management and Commerce (IMC) All content is subject to change.

Username or email  *

Password  *

Forgotten password?

[email protected]

+44 (0)20 8834 4579

How to Write a First-Class Law Essay

Studying law at university entails lots of essay writing. This article takes you through the key steps to writing a top law essay.

Writing a law essay can be a challenging task. As a law student, you’ll be expected to analyse complex legal issues and apply legal principles to real-world scenarios. At the same time, you’ll need to be able to communicate your ideas clearly and persuasively. In this article, we’ll cover some top tips to guide you through the process of planning, researching, structuring and writing a first-class law essay with confidence. 

1. Start In Advance

Give yourself plenty of time to plan, research and write your law essay. Always aim to start your law essay as soon as you have the question. Leaving it until the last minute does not only create unnecessary stress, but it also leaves you insufficient time to write, reference and perfect your work.

2. Understand The Question

Do not begin until you fully comprehend the question. Take the time to read the question carefully and make sure that you understand what it’s asking you to do. Highlight key terms and annotate the question with definitions of key concepts and any questions that you have have. Think about how the question links back to what you’ve learned during your lectures or through your readings.

3. Conduct Thorough Research

Conducting thorough research around your topic is one of the most fundamental parts of the essay writing process. You should aim to use a range of relevant sources, such as cases, academic articles, books and any other legal materials. Ensure that the information you collect is taken from relevant, reliable and up to date sources. Use primary over secondary material as much as possible.

Avoid using outdated laws and obscure blog posts as sources of information. Always aim to choose authoritative sources from experts within the field, such as academics, politicians, lawyers and judges. Using high-quality and authoritative sources and demonstrating profound and critical insight into your topic are what will earn you top marks.

4. Write A Detailed Plan

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to plan your essay. When writing your plan, you’ll need to create an outline that clearly identifies the main points that you wish to make throughout your article. Try to write down what you wish to achieve in each paragraph, what concepts you want to discuss and arguments you want to make.

Your outline should be organised in a clear, coherent and logical manner to ensure that the person grading your essay can follow your line of thought and arguments easily.  You may also wish to include headings and subheadings to structure your essay effectively This makes it easier when it comes to writing the essay as starting without a plan can get messy. The essay must answer the question and nothing but the question so ensure all of your points relate to it.

Start Writing Like A Lawyer

Read our legal writing tips now

5. Write A Compelling Introduction

A great introduction should, firstly, outline the research topic.  The introduction is one of the most crucial parts of the law essay as it sets the tone for the rest of the paper. It should capture the readers attention and provide the background context on the topic. Most importantly, it should state the thesis of your essay.

When writing your introduction, avoid simply repeating the given question. Secondly, create a road map for the reader, letting them know how the essay will approach the question. Your introduction must be concise. The main body of the essay is where you will go into detail.

6. Include A Strong Thesis Statement

Your thesis should clearly set out the argument you are going to be making throughout your essay and should normally go in the introduction. Your thesis should adopt a clear stance rather than being overly general or wishy-washy. To obtain the best grades, you’ll need to show a unique perspective based upon a critical analysis of the topic rather than adopting the most obvious point of view.

Once you’ve conducted your research and had a chance to reflect on your topic, ask yourself whether you can prove your argument within the given word count or whether you would need to adopt a more modest position for your paper. Always have a clear idea of what your thesis statement is before you begin writing the content of your essay. 

7. Present the Counter-argument

To demonstrate your deeper understanding of the topic, it’s important to show your ability to consider the counter-arguments and address them in a careful and reasoned manner. When presenting your counterarguments, aim to depict them in the best possible light, aiming to be fair and reasonable before moving on to your rebuttal. To ensure that your essay is convincing, you will need to have a strong rebuttal that explains why your argument is stronger and more persuasive. This will demonstrate your capacity for critical analysis, showing the reader that you have carefully considered differing perspectives before coming to a well-supported conclusion.

8. End With A Strong Conclusion

Your conclusion is your opportunity to summarise the key points made throughout your essay and to restate the thesis statement in a clear and concise manner.  Avoid simply repeating what has already been mentioned in the body of the essay. For top grades, you should use the conclusion as an opportunity to provide critical reflection and analysis on the topic. You may also wish to share any further insights or recommendations into alternative avenues to consider or implications for further research that could add value to the topic. 

9. Review The Content Of Your Essay

Make sure you factor in time to edit the content of your essay.  Once you’ve finished your first draft, come back to it the next day. Re-read your essay with a critical perspective. Do your arguments make sense? Do your paragraphs flow in a logical manner? You may also consider asking someone to read your paper and give you critical feedback. They may be able to add another perspective you haven’t considered or suggest another research paper that could add value to your essay. 

10. Proofread For Grammatical Mistakes

Once you’re happy with the content of your essay, the last step is to thoroughly proofread your essay for any grammatical errors. Ensure that you take time to ensure that there are no grammar, spelling or punctuation errors as these can be one of the easiest ways to lose marks. You can ask anyone to proofread your paper, as they would not necessarily need to have a legal background – just strong grammar and spelling skills! 

11. Check Submission Guidelines

Before submitting, ensure that your paper conforms with the style, referencing and presentation guidelines set out by your university. This includes the correct font, font size and line spacing as well as elements such as page numbers, table of content etc. Referencing is also incredibly important as you’ll need to make sure that you are following the correct referencing system chosen by your university. Check your university’s guidelines about what the word count is and whether you need to include your student identification number in your essay as well. Be thorough and don’t lose marks for minor reasons!

12. Use Legal Terms Accurately

Always make sure that you are using legal terms accurately throughout your essay. Check an authoritative resource if you are unsure of any definitions. While being sophisticated is great, legal jargon if not used correctly or appropriately can weaken your essay. Aim to be concise and to stick to the point. Don’t use ten words when only two will do.

12. Create a Vocabulary Bank

One recurring piece of advice from seasoned law students is to take note of phrases from books and articles, key definitions or concepts and even quotes from your professors. When it comes to writing your law essay, you will have a whole range of ideas and vocabulary that will help you to develop your understanding and thoughts on a given topic. This will make writing your law essay even easier!

13. Finally, Take Care of Yourself

Last but certainly not least, looking after your health can improve your attitude towards writing your law essay your coursework in general. Sleep, eat, drink and exercise appropriately. Take regular breaks and try not to stress. Do not forget to enjoy writing the essay!

Words by Karen Fulton

Free Guides

Our free guides cover everything from deciding on law to studying and practising law abroad. Search through our vast directory.

Upcoming Events

Explore our events for aspiring lawyers. Sponsored by top institutions, they offer fantastic insights into the legal profession.

Join Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list for weekly updates and advice on how to get into law.

Law Quizzes

Try our selection of quizzes for aspiring lawyers for a fun way to gain insight into the legal profession!

PREVIOUS ARTICLE

Legal Writing: Start Writing Like a Lawyer!

NEXT ARTICLE

LLM Jobs for Graduates

Loading More Content

The Concepts of Law

Thanks to John Gerring, Brian Leiter, Saul Levmore, Simone Sepe, and Lawrence Solum for superb comments.

• Share The University of Chicago Law Review | The Concepts of Law on Facebook
• Share The University of Chicago Law Review | The Concepts of Law on Twitter
• Share The University of Chicago Law Review | The Concepts of Law on Email
• Share The University of Chicago Law Review | The Concepts of Law on LinkedIn

Concepts are the building blocks of legal doctrine. All legal rules and standards, in fact, are formed by combining concepts in different ways. But despite their centrality, legal concepts are not well understood. There is no agreement as to what makes a legal concept useful or ineffective—worth keeping or in need of revision. Social scientists, however, have developed a set of criteria for successful concepts. Of these, the most important is measurability: the ability, at least in principle, to assess a concept with data. In this Essay, we apply the social scientific criteria to a number of concepts and conceptual relationships in American constitutional law. We show that this field includes both poor and effective concepts and conceptual links. We also explain how the examples of poor concepts could be improved.

I.  A Primer on Conceptualization and Measurement

A.    Concepts and Conceptualization

Concepts provide the mental architecture by which we understand the world and are ubiquitous in social science as well as law. Conceptualization involves the process of formulating a mental construct at a particular level of abstraction. 10 A large debate in the philosophy of cognitive science grapples with different views of concepts. 11 Some regard concepts as essentially nominal in character, meaning that they are about definitions of phenomena rather than the phenomena themselves. Some see concepts as marking mental representations of phenomena. 12 Others see concepts as ontological claims or “theories about the fundamental constitutive elements of a phenomenon.” 13

“Concept” itself is a tricky concept. For our purposes, concepts can be distinguished from other phenomena of interest to law such as words or rules. Law is composed of words or labels, but these are different from the concepts that are the building blocks of law. To see why, consider that a single label can refer to multiple concepts: a right means one thing when giving directions, but quite another when discussing the legal system. Even within the law, the concept of a right is different when thinking about an individual’s freedom from torture than when talking about Mother Nature’s right to remediation. 14 Conversely, a similar concept can be represented by different words.

Concepts are also distinct from rules . Rules provide decision procedures to categorize behavior as, for example, legal or illegal. A legal rule is composed of multiple concepts put together in a particular kind of relationship: if someone engages in murder , she shall be subject to a penalty of imprisonment . Each of these concepts might have subconcepts: murder , for example, is killing with malice aforethought or intent . The rule provides the criteria for decision, but relies on abstract ideas—concepts—with more or less intuitive appeal. This simple example demonstrates that law is built of concepts and subconcepts, structured together in particular ways.

Some concepts are developed through necessary, or necessary and sufficient, attributes. It is necessary that a mammal be an animal; it is necessary and sufficient that it be an animal that secretes milk to feed its young. Another way of approaching attributes is to list all the desirable ones, and perhaps to treat them additively, so that more of them will get one closer to the ideal of the particular concept. This is sometimes called a maximal strategy of conceptualization and is exemplified at the extreme by Max Weber’s concept of an ideal type, which may never be met in practice. 15 A third approach relies on the “family resemblance” of phenomena, so that even if no single attribute is necessary or sufficient, the presence of enough attributes will suffice to mark the presence of the concept. 16 Bearing live young, possessing fur, and secreting milk are common or typical attributes of mammals, even though the platypus, a mammal, does not have all of these features. Finally, and most relevant to our project here, some believe that concepts are always embedded in a broader theory, so that their essential features may not be observable at all, but instead are defined as part of the background theory. This is known as the “theory theory” of concepts. 17

Many legal tests are formulated as having necessary and sufficient attributes. If one has a duty to behave in a particular way, has breached this duty, and has caused damage to another, then one has, by definition, committed a tort. But some legal concepts are formulated as multipart tests in which factors are added and weighed, with an eye toward seeing if the ideal is met. In deciding if an attorney in a prevailing ERISA claim is to be awarded fees, for example, courts apply a five-factor test:

(1) the degree of culpability or bad faith attributable to the losing party; (2) the depth of the losing party’s pocket, i.e., his or her capacity to pay an award; (3) the extent (if at all) to which such an award would deter other persons acting under similar circumstances; (4) the benefit (if any) that the successful suit confers on plan participants or beneficiaries generally; and (5) the relative merit of the parties’ positions. 18

The implicit concept here is an ideal type of what might be called appropriate fee-shifting. None of the five elements is absolutely necessary, but if all five are plainly met, the ideal type will be achieved. The closer one gets to the ideal type, the more likely one is to get an award. The internal participant within the legal system, in this case a judge, will engage in the process of running through the attributes to see if they are met.

Legal concepts come in different levels of abstraction, often nested within one another. Private law is more encompassing than tort, which in turn encompasses negligent infliction of emotional distress. Unlike in social science, however, there is not much explicit legal work on concept formation, and few of the rich definitional debates that mark social scientific literatures on, say, democracy or even the rule of law. Our argument is that paying attention to legal concepts can improve the structure of the law.

B.    What Makes a Good Concept?

There are several different social scientific conceptualizations about what it is that makes a good concept. A common approach is a listing of attributes, such as parsimony, explanatory power, and distinction from other concepts. These lists vary from scholar to scholar, but we rely on a recent contribution from the prominent social scientist Professor John Gerring, who argues that a good social scientific concept can be evaluated on several dimensions. 19 It should have resonance, in that it should “make[ ] sense” to observers; it should have a stipulated domain over which it applies; it should be consistent, in the sense of conveying the same meaning in different contexts; it should be “fecund,” meaning that it has richness and depth; it should be differentiated from other neighboring concepts; it should have causal utility, meaning that it is useful; and it should in principle be measurable, that is, capable of being operationalized within social scientific frameworks. 20 Let us describe each of these in a bit more detail, with an application to law.

Resonance is a quality that is essentially linguistic in character, and can easily be applied to law. For example, we can ask whether a legal test is resonant with the relevant audience. Does the framework of examining tiers of scrutiny “make sense” to observers? Is proportionality an intuitive concept in terms of advancing ideas about justice? Is it faithful to established definitions? 21 We can also compare legal concepts for linguistic resonance: For example, in considering instances when a government diminishes an investment’s value, is “indirect expropriation” or “regulatory taking” a better concept? Resonance is essentially about labels and how well they communicate an idea to an audience.

Many legal concepts are clearly resonant. However, it is an interesting feature of some legal concepts that they are in fact distinct from the ordinary meaning attached to the same terms. Only in law does “intent” include reckless disregard as well as intending the outcome; “statutory rape” adds the adjective precisely because the conduct it condemns is consensual. There is thus some variation across legal concepts in terms of resonance.

Domain simply refers to the realm in which a concept applies, and is fairly clear when applied to law. 22 The domain of legal concepts is, in fact, the legal system, and is not meant to encompass anything outside it. Thus, specialized language within the law is deployed internally. Common-law marriage refers to the idea that the marriage is legal, even if not formally recorded.

Consistency requires that a concept carry the same meaning in different empirical contexts. 23 If the concept of felony murder is different in Louisiana and California, this would violate the requirement of consistency. Observe that the legal definitions in the two states might diverge, maybe even dramatically, but this does not mean that the concept would differ. But it is also the case that, for example, multipart tests may put pressure on conceptual consistency across contexts. To use the fee-shifting example described above, if an award were based primarily on the wealth of the losing party, it would imply a different purpose than if it were based on deterrence considerations. These might be seen as internally inconsistent applications of the test, ultimately based on different concepts.

Fecundity is defined by Gerring as referring to “coherence, depth, fruitfulness, illumination, informative-ness, insight, natural kinds, power, productivity, richness, or thickness.” 24 This collection of descriptors has to do with a concept’s ability to describe reality in a rich way, and in some sense to reveal a structure that might not be apparent without the concept. 25 It is a desirable feature of social science, though not so important in law in our view, because some legal concepts can be limited to very narrow technical applications. For example, in social science, in thinking about different types of political “regimes,” one might distinguish authoritarian regimes from democracies, or might alternately look at particular subtypes within each category: electoral authoritarians, totalitarians, military regimes, and absolute monarchies, 26 or presidential and parliamentary democracies. 27 An ana­logously fecund legal concept might be “rights,” which has generated many subtypes. But other legal concepts can be narrow and yet still effective within their specific domain: a lien or a stay, for example, reveals no deep structure.

Differentiation refers to the distinction between a concept and a neighboring concept. 28 Sometimes concepts are defined by their neighboring concepts. As Gerring notes, nation-states are defined in contrast with empires, political parties in contrast with interest groups. 29 It is thus the case that new concepts are best when they fit within existing concepts. When a new legal idea is created—sexual harassment, for example—it is helpful to mark how it differs from existing concepts. 30

Causal utility refers to the usefulness of a concept. 31 Obviously, this is domain specific. Professor Gary Goertz focuses on the utility of concepts for social scientific methods. 32 But in law we might ask how easy the concept is for courts to apply, and how effective it is in differentiating lawful from unlawful behavior.

The requirement that a concept be measurable is a frequent desideratum in social scientific accounts of concepts (in which it is sometimes called operationalizability). The idea here is not that there must be available data or indicators that meet the standard tests of social science. Instead, the point of measurability is that in principle there ought to be data that could be deployed to test theories that use the concept. 33 For legal tests, it may be prudent to consider whether measures can be developed in principle. This might help to ensure that the analyst is proposing a workable test that is capable of achieving its aims.

Consider an example of an internal legal doctrine, drawn again from the five-part test for attorney’s fees in the ERISA context. 34 Some of the elements are more amenable to empirical verification than others: the wealth of the losing party and the potential deterrent effect of an award are, in principle, quantifiable. The other elements—culpability, benefits, and relative merit—are less so. To successfully deploy this conceptual test, courts will thus have to aggregate, by an unknown weighting formula, five different elements that are fairly discrete, possibly incommensurable, and difficult to operationalize. To the extent that the elements are measurable, this exercise could be more precise, transparent, and ultimately legitimate. Our view is that measurability, even in principle, can bring precision and discipline to law.

C.    Relationships among Concepts

Many of the central questions in social science involve relationships among different concepts. Does democracy increase economic growth? Does race correlate with voting behavior? Do people behave rationally in their investment decisions? Are military alliances stable across time? Each of these questions features at least two different concepts, which might in theory take on different meanings and surely could be measured in many different ways. Each also features a relationship among concepts, whether causal or correlative.

Examining these relationships among concepts also requires operationalizing them. This means we must come up with tractable indicators or measures that can then be deployed into a research design. Indeed, some argue that this is the central criterion of a good social scientific concept. If a concept is not capable of being operationalized, then it is lacking a central characteristic, and even the presence of many other desirable features may not be able to save it. 35

Law, too, is centrally concerned with relationships among concepts. The variety of conceptual relationships in law is very large. The multipart tests mentioned above aggregate a variety of concepts into a single framework, which is fundamentally an additive approach to linking concepts. In contrast, the famous framework of Professor Wesley Hohfeld distinguished between conceptual correlates and conceptual opposites. 36 Correlative relationships are exemplified by the binary of right and duty, which co-occur so that if someone has a right, someone else has a duty. Opposites, on the other hand, are conceptually distinct. For example, someone with no duty has a privilege to do something or not; privilege and duty are opposites in Hohfeld’s framework. 37 In other cases, concepts are nested within one another in fields: tort includes intentional infliction of emotional distress. Still other concepts can cut across fields: the concept of intent is used in multiple fields of law, sometimes in different ways. Many further types of semantic relationships are conceivable as well.

Rather than try to exhaustively categorize all possible relationships, we are most concerned here with a particular kind of connection among legal concepts: that of a causal character. Causal relationships are very common in legal concepts. At the most basic level, law often seeks to advance particular interests. Some of these interests, such as efficiency, justice, or fairness, are external to the law itself. Others may themselves be defined by the law, and so can be characterized as internal concepts. Either way, there is an assumption that legal rules have some causal efficacy in advancing interests. This is what is sometimes called an instrumental view of law. 38 While it is not the only view on offer, we adopt it for present purposes. We need not offer an absolute defense of the instrumental view, even if we are partial to it; the reader need accept only that it is a common view.

Causation is a good example of a concept that is used in both law and social science, in slightly different ways. Causation in social science is essentially conceived of in probabilistic terms. 39 If we say that X causes Y , we are saying that a change in the value of X will likely be associated with a change in the value of Y , holding all else constant. The tools of social science, and the rules of inference, are designed to help identify such relationships. In contrast, legal causation is more normative, focusing on the kinds of responsibility for harms that warrant liability and the kinds that do not. 40

Other examples of causal legal relationships abound. When we ask if a regulation constitutes a taking of property (or an indirect expropriation, to use the international law term), we want to know whether a change in the level of regulation would lead to a change in one’s ability to use the property to the point that the owner should receive compensation. 41 When we ask whether a policy has a discriminatory impact on a group under the Fair Housing Act 42 or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 43 we need to identify baseline levels of demographic concentration, and then ask whether a different policy would lead to a different level of treatment for the group. 44 We also want to compare alternative policies. Is it the case that once a particular level of impact is reached, one can stop the inquiry? Or is it a matter of cost-benefit analysis, such that increases in the impact may be outweighed by benefits on the other side? If so, does the disparate impact increase in a linear way with increments of the policy? These types of questions are rarely considered by lawyers or judges, who use causal language in a more heuristic way.

As these examples suggest, recognizing that legal concepts often involve relationships implies that we ought to favor concepts whose connections can in fact be identified and established. This is because such concepts can in principle be applied in consistent and precise ways across cases. While we know that not every concept can be captured by a real-world indicator or variable, we still think it valuable for lawyers and judges to focus on relationships for which the basic logic of X and Y holds.

Of course, the fact that not every relationship between concepts can be measured poses challenges for certain analyses. For instance, legal philosophers have wrestled with the idea of incommensurability, “the absence of a scale or metric.” 45 When values are not capable of being arrayed on a single scale, we think of them as incommensurable. Thinking about relationships that in principle can be ordered and tested on the same scale will, ceteris paribus, make the law more tractable. Similarly, the idea of outright necessity is subtly different from the more feasible notions of causation and correlation. Proving that only X can achieve Y is much more difficult—in fact, impossible in many contexts—than showing that X is one of the factors that drive Y .

II.  Conceptualizing Constitutional Law

To reiterate the discussion to this point: Social scientists have developed reasonably determinate criteria for distinguishing between effective and ineffective concepts, and between conceptual relationships that can and cannot be demonstrated. In brief, the hallmarks of effective concepts are resonance, domain specificity, consistency, fecundity, differentiation from other concepts, causal utility, and, above all, measurability. Similarly, conceptual relationships involving correlation or causality are more easily established than ones involving necessity or the weighing of incommensurable quantities.

How well does law perform under these criteria? Are its concepts and conceptual relationships satisfactory or in need of improvement? These questions are far too broad to be answered fully here, but we begin to address them using a series of examples from American constitutional law. These examples include both poor concepts and relationships (for which we suggest improvement) and effective ones (for which we explain why they are useful). Constitutional law also strikes us as an unusually fertile field to plow for illustrations. It is a subject that brims with concepts and complex linkages among them. These concepts and linkages are largely (though not entirely) judicially created, meaning that they can be revised by the courts as well. And, not unimportantly for a project that potentially implicates law’s entire empire, constitutional law is a discrete domain with which we are relatively familiar.

A.    Poor Concepts

Before labeling any concept as poor, we must note a number of caveats. First, our tags are based not on a rigorous examination of all constitutional concepts (a daunting task to say the least), but rather on an impressionistic survey of several high-profile areas. In other words, we do not claim to have identified the worst (or best) concepts, but only a few concepts that mostly fail (or satisfy) the social scientific criteria for conceptualization. Second, our treatment of each concept is necessarily brief. We hit what we see as the essential points, but we cannot grapple here with each concept’s full complexity. And third, though our mode is diagnostic, criticizing certain concepts and praising others, our ultimate aim is prescriptive. That is, we are interested in contemplating how constitutional law might look if its concepts were more effective—and in finding ways to push the doctrine in that direction.

Having disposed of these preliminaries, corruption is our first example of a concept that we regard as unhelpful. The prevention of corruption is the only justification the Supreme Court has recognized for burdening First Amendment rights by restricting the financing of political campaigns. 46 Corruption is also unquestionably a resonant and fecund concept, in that it is intuitively undesirable to most observers and conveys a rich array of negative meanings. This rich array, though, is part of the problem. Precisely because corruption can mean many different things, the term can be—and has been—defined in many different ways. 47 The Court, in particular, has toggled back and forth between three conceptions: a narrower version limited to explicit quid pro quos, or overt exchanges of money for official governmental acts; 48 a broader version covering funders’ access to and influence over officeholders; 49 and a still more expansive version extending to the distortion of electoral outcomes due to corporate spending. 50

In terms of the social scientific criteria, these shifting notions mean that corruption lacks domain specificity, consistency, and differentiation from other concepts. Domain specificity is missing because the narrower version applies to only the restriction of campaign contributions, while the two broader versions justify the limitation of campaign expenditures as well. 51 Consistency is absent for the obvious reason that the Court has adopted three in consistent definitions of corruption in the span of just a single generation. And depending on how it is construed, corruption bleeds into bribery (whose trademark is the quid pro quo exchange), skewed representation (responsive to funders rather than voters), or inequality (in electoral influence). 52

One might respond that most of these difficulties would be avoided if the Court could only settle on a single notion of corruption. But there is no easy way in which the Court could do so because, as several scholars have pointed out, corruption is a derivative concept that becomes intelligible only through an antecedent theory of purity for the entity at issue. 53 With respect to legislators, for example, one can say they are corrupt only if one first has an account of how they should behave when they are pure. One thus needs a model of representation before one can arrive at a definition of legislative corruption—a definition that would correspond to deviation from this model. Of course, the Court could choose to embrace a particular representational approach, but this is hardly a straightforward matter, and it is one in which the Court has evinced no interest to date.

Moreover, even if the Court somehow managed to stick to a single notion of corruption, it would run into further issues of measurability and causal utility. These issues stem from the covert nature of most corrupt activities. When politicians trade votes for money, they do so in secret. When officeholders merely offer access or influence to their funders, they again do so as furtively as possible. Precisely for these reasons, social scientists have rarely been able to quantify corruption itself, resorting instead to rough proxies such as people’s trust in government 54 and the volume of public officials convicted of bribery. 55 Unsurprisingly, given the crudity of these metrics, no significant relationships have been found between campaign finance regulation and corruption. 56 Greater regulation seems neither to increase people’s faith in their rulers nor to reduce the number of officials taken on perp walks.

Thanks to its poor performance on almost every criterion, we consider corruption to be an unsalvageable concept. It has not been, nor can it be, properly defined or measured. If it were abandoned, though, what would take its place in the campaign finance case law? We see two options. Less controversially, corruption could be swapped for one of the concepts into which it blurs, such as bribery. More provocatively (because further doctrinally afield), campaign finance regulation could be justified based on its promotion of distinct values such as electoral competitiveness, voter participation, or congruence with the median voter’s preferences. 57 This is not the place to defend these values, though offhand all seem more tractable than corruption. Our point, rather, is that when a particular concept is unworkable, it is often possible to replace it with a more suitable alternative.

We turn next to our second example of a flawed constitutional concept: political powerlessness , which is one of the four indicia of suspect class status under equal protection law. 58 Like corruption, powerlessness is a self-evidently resonant and fecund concept. To say that a group is powerless is to say something important about it, to convey a great deal of information about the group’s position, organization, and capability. Also, as with corruption, the amount of information conveyed is a bug, not a feature. The many inferences supported by powerlessness give rise to many definitions of the term by the Court, including a group’s small numerical size, inability to vote, lack of descriptive representation, low socioeconomic status, and failure to win the passage of protective legislation. 59

And again as with corruption, these multiple notions of powerlessness sap the concept of consistency and differentiation from other concepts. The inconsistency is obvious; the notions of powerlessness are not just multiple, but also irreconcilable. 60 Depending on how it is defined, powerlessness also becomes difficult to distinguish from concepts such as disenfranchisement, underrepresentation, and even poverty. And while the different conceptions of powerlessness do not directly undermine its domain specificity, this criterion is not satisfied either, due to the uncertainty over how powerlessness relates to the other indicia of suspect class status. It is unclear whether powerlessness is a necessary, sufficient, or merely conducive condition for a class to be deemed suspect. 61

However, unlike with corruption, a particular definition of powerlessness may be theoretically compelled—and is certainly not theoretically precluded. The powerlessness factor has its roots in United States v Carolene Products Co ’s 62 account of “those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities.” 63 “Those political processes,” in turn, refer to pluralism: the idea that society is divided into countless overlapping groups, from whose shifting coalitions public policy emerges. 64 And pluralism implies a specific notion of group power: one that is continuous rather than binary, spans all issues, focuses on policy enactment, and controls for group size and type. 65 Thus, powerlessness not only can, but arguably must, be conceived of in a certain way if it is to remain true to its pluralist pedigree.

Furthermore, if powerlessness is so understood, it becomes possible to measure and apply it. Social scientists have compiled extensive data on both the policy preferences of different groups and whether these preferences are realized in enacted law. 66 Combining this information, a group’s odds of getting its preferred policies passed can be determined, adjusted for the group’s size, and then compared to the odds of other groups. 67 This method yields the conclusions that blacks and women (both already suspect classes) are relatively powerless compared to whites and men. 68 Interestingly, it also indicates that the poor (not currently a suspect class) have far less clout than the middle class and the wealthy. 69

Because powerlessness can be—even though it has not been—defined and measured properly, we come to a different verdict for it than for corruption. That is, we recommend discarding the Court’s various notions of it and replacing them with the pluralist conception outlined above. Considering corruption and powerlessness in tandem also allows us to hazard a guess as to why the Court sometimes adopts faulty concepts. In both of these (potentially unrepresentative) cases, the Court borrowed complex ideas from democratic theory without fully grasping the ideas’ internal logic. At best (as with powerlessness), this approach leads to the circulation of numerous definitions of the concept, one of which is eventually found to be theoretically and practically defensible. At worst (as with corruption), the approach causes multiple definitions to be bandied about, none of which is theoretically legitimate or capable of being operationalized. Plainly, this is a far cry from textbook concept formation.

B.    Effective Concepts

We doubt that the Court ever complies perfectly with any social scientific textbook. But the Court does, on occasion, recognize constitutional concepts that are significantly more effective than the ones analyzed to this point. As a first example of a successful concept, take partisan symmetry , which five justices tentatively endorsed in a recent case as a potential foundation for a test for partisan gerrymandering. 70 Partisan symmetry “requires that the electoral system treat similarly-situated parties equally,” so that they are able to convert their popular support into legislative representation with approximately equal ease. 71 The Court cautiously backed symmetry only after struggling for decades with—and ultimately rejecting—a host of other possible linchpins for a gerrymandering test: seat-vote proportionality (inconsistent with single-member districts), predominant partisan intent (too difficult to discern), district noncompactness (not itself a meaningful value), and so on. 72

Partisan symmetry performs suitably well along all of the relevant dimensions. It is resonant and fecund because it captures the core harm of gerrymandering: a district plan that enables one party to translate its votes into seats more efficiently than its rival. 73 It is limited to the domain of electoral systems. It is defined identically in both the case law and the academic literature. 74 It is distinct from the other concepts the Court has considered in this area—including proportionality, which is a property that symmetric plans may, but need not, exhibit. 75 It is measurable using easily obtained electoral data and well-established statistical techniques. 76 And it is useful in that it conveys in a single figure the direction and extent of a plan’s partisan skew.

However, we do not mean to claim that partisan symmetry is a flawless concept. It does not take into account odd district shape or partisan motivation, both aspects of gerrymandering as the practice is commonly understood. Its calculation requires fairly strong assumptions about uncontested races and shifts in the statewide vote. 77 Two different symmetry metrics exist, which usually but not always point in the same direction. 78 And to form a workable test for gerrymandering, symmetry must be combined with other prongs, thus somewhat diminishing its utility. Somewhat , though, is the key word here. Symmetry is not a perfect concept; no concept is. But symmetry can be defined, measured, and applied coherently, which is the most the law can ask of a concept.

Our second example of an effective concept, racial polarization in voting , has had a doctrinal history similar to that of partisan symmetry. Between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s, the Court struggled to identify the exact problem with racial vote dilution (the reduction of minorities’ electoral influence through means other than burdening the franchise). 79 Unable to crystallize the issue, the Court instead laid out a dozen factors that were meant to be analyzed in unison to determine liability. 80 This unwieldy doctrinal structure finally collapsed in 1986, when the Court held that plaintiffs had to prove racial polarization in order to prevail. 81 The Court also carefully defined polarization as “the situation where different races . . . vote in blocs for different candidates.” 82

Like partisan symmetry, racial polarization in voting complies reasonably well with all of the social scientific criteria for conceptualization. It is resonant and fecund because it reflects the reality that racial vote dilution is possible only under polarized electoral conditions. If polarization does not exist, then neither can a minority group prefer a distinct candidate, nor can the majority thwart a minority-preferred candidate’s election. 83 It is limited to the field of vote dilution, not even extending to the adjacent area of vote denial. 84 It is understood in the same way by both judges and scholars. 85 It is different from other important vote dilution concepts like a minority group’s geographic compactness and elected officials’ responsiveness to the group’s concerns. 86 It is measurable by applying ecological regression techniques to election results and demographic data. 87 And it is useful because it is both the mechanism that drives vote dilution and a metric reducible to a single number.

But also like partisan symmetry, racial polarization in voting has its warts too. Not all commentators agree that it is troublesome when it is caused by forces other than racial prejudice, such as differences in partisanship or socioeconomic status. 88 Nor is there consensus that polarization in voting is the quantity of interest, as some scholars emphasize polarization in policy preferences instead. 89 Furthermore, courts have never resolved how extreme polarization must be to establish liability. And almost from the day polarization became a requirement, it has been clear that its measurement is complicated by residential integration, the presence of more than two racial groups, and the inevitable endogeneity of election results (above all, to the particular candidates competing). 90 All of these shortcomings, though, strike us as fixable rather than fatal. This also has been the judgment of the judiciary, which has productively analyzed polarization in hundreds of cases since 1986. 91

As before, we are wary of generalizing based on only a pair of cases. But considered together, partisan symmetry and racial polarization in voting suggest that the Court does better when it turns for concepts to empirical political science than to high democratic theory. Before they ever appeared in the Court’s case law, symmetry and polarization had been precisely defined and then measured using large volumes of data as well as methods that steadily improved over time. 92 These properties meant that when the ideas came to the Court’s attention, they were ready for prime time. They were not lofty abstractions that had yet to be made concrete, but rather practical concepts whose scope and calculation were already established. Our view is that this approach—adopting concepts previously formulated and refined by empirical social scientists—is generally advisable. It lets the Court benefit from the efforts of other disciplines, while avoiding reliance on concepts articulated at too high a level of generality to be legally useful.

C.    Poor Relationships

We turn next to examples of poor and effective conceptual relationships in constitutional law. We also reiterate our earlier caveats: that the cases we highlight are not necessarily representative, that our discussion of each case is relatively brief, and that we mean for our descriptive analysis to have normative implications for the structure of constitutional doctrine.

That said, the narrow tailoring requirement of strict scrutiny is our first example of an unhelpful constitutional relationship. As a formal matter, this requirement states that, to survive review, a challenged policy must be “necessary” 93 or “the least restrictive means” 94 for furthering a compelling governmental interest. In practice, the requirement is implemented sometimes in this way and sometimes by balancing the harm inflicted by a policy against the degree to which it advances a compelling interest—with a heavy thumb on the harm’s side of the scale. 95 Narrow tailoring is ubiquitous in constitutional law, applying to (among other areas) explicit racial classifications, 96 policies that burden rights recognized as fundamental under the Due Process Clause, 97 and measures that regulate speech on the basis of its content. 98

The fundamental problem with narrow tailoring is that there is no reliable way to tell whether a policy is actually necessary or the least restrictive means for promoting a given interest. Social scientific techniques are very good at determining whether a means is related (that is, correlated) to an end. They are also reasonably adept at assessing causation, though this is a more difficult issue. Other variables that might be linked to the end can be controlled for, and all kinds of quasi-experimental approaches can be employed. 99 But social scientific techniques are largely incapable of demonstrating necessity. A mere correlation does not even establish causation, let alone that a policy is the least restrictive means for furthering an interest. Even when causation is shown, it always remains possible that a different policy would advance the interest at least as well. Not every conceivable control can be included in a model, and the universe of policy alternatives is near infinite as well. In short, the gold standard of social science is proving that X causes Y —but this proof cannot guarantee that some other variable does not drive Y to an even greater extent. 100

A somewhat different critique applies to the balancing that courts sometimes carry out instead of means-end analysis. Here, the trouble is that the quantities being compared—the harm inflicted by a policy, either by burdening certain rights or by classifying groups in certain ways, and the policy’s promotion of a compelling governmental interest—are incommensurable, in the sense we outlined earlier. Social science has little difficulty with the comparison of quantities that are measured using the same scale. Familiar techniques such as factor analysis also enable quantities measured using different scales to be collapsed into a single composite variable. 101 But there is little that social science can do when the relevant quantities are measured differently, cannot be collapsed, and yet must be weighed against each other. This kind of inquiry, as Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, is akin to “judging whether a particular line is longer than a particular rock is heavy.” 102 Instinct and intuition may assist in answering the question, but more rigorous methods are unavailing.

These faults of narrow tailoring seem irremediable to us. It is simply infeasible to have to determine a policy’s necessity or whether its harms are offset by its incommensurable benefits. Fortunately, an obvious alternative exists: the means-end analysis that courts conduct when they engage in intermediate scrutiny. In these cases, courts ask whether a policy is “substantially related” to the achievement of an important governmental objective. 103 A substantial relationship means either a substantial correlation or, perhaps, a causal connection. 104 Either way, the issue is squarely in the wheelhouse of social science, whose forte is assessing correlation and causation. We therefore recommend exporting this aspect of intermediate scrutiny to the strict scrutiny context—perhaps with an additional twist or two to keep the latter more rigorous than the former. For instance, a strong rather than merely substantial relationship could be required, or a large impact on the relevant governmental goal.

Our second example of a poor constitutional relationship is the undue burden test that applies to regulations of abortion, voting, and (when enacted by states) interstate commerce. 105 In all of these areas, a law is invalid if it imposes an undue burden on the value at issue: the right to an abortion, 106 the right to vote, 107 or the free flow of interstate commerce. 108 An initial problem with this test is the ambiguity of its formulation. It is unclear whether “undue” contemplates a link between a challenged policy and a governmental interest and, if so, what sort of link it requires. Precisely because of this ambiguity, no consistent definition exists of an undue burden. Instead, courts use different versions of the test, even within the same domain, of varying manageability.

For example, an undue burden is sometimes treated as synonymous with a significant burden. “A finding of an undue burden is a shorthand for the conclusion that a state regulation . . . plac[es] a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion,” declared the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey . 109 If an undue burden is understood in this way, we have no quarrel with it. The magnitude of a burden is measurable, at least in principle, and does not involve a policy’s connection with a governmental interest. It is a concept rather than a conceptual relationship.

On the other hand, an undue burden is sometimes construed as one that is unnecessary to achieve a legitimate governmental objective. The Casey joint opinion articulated the test in these terms as well: “Unnecessary health regulations that . . . present[ ] a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right.” 110 So conceived, an undue burden falls victim to our earlier criticism of narrow tailoring. That is, there is no good way to tell whether a policy is the least restrictive means for accomplishing a given goal, meaning that there is also no good way to tell whether the burden imposed by the policy is undue.

On still other occasions, the undue burden test devolves into judicial balancing, with the severity of a policy’s burden weighed against the degree to which the policy promotes governmental interests. The burden is then deemed undue if it fails this cost-benefit analysis. As the Court has stated in the Dormant Commerce Clause context, where it “has candidly undertaken a balancing approach in resolving these issues,” a policy “will be upheld unless the burden imposed on such commerce is [ ] excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.” 111 Plainly, this formulation is also vulnerable to our challenge to narrow tailoring. Burdens on abortion, voting, or interstate commerce are no more commensurable with gains in governmental interests than are other types of rights burdens or the harms of racial classifications. Balancing under narrow tailoring is indistinguishable from balancing under an undue burden test.

Because several notions of an undue burden percolate in the case law, doctrinal progress is possible here without wholesale rejection of the status quo. 112 Instead, courts need discard only the versions that entail least-restrictive-means or balancing analyses, leaving them with the approach that equates an undue with a significant burden. Judicial scrutiny could then vary based on a burden’s magnitude, with a severe burden leading to more stringent review and a lighter imposition prompting a more relaxed appraisal. This is already the method that courts most commonly use in the voting context, 113 and it could be extended to the abortion and Dormant Commerce Clause domains—preferably with our amendment to strict scrutiny stripping it of its narrow tailoring prong.

D.    Effective Relationships

In still other areas, no doctrinal revisions seem necessary because the existing conceptual relationships work well enough already. As a first example of effective relationships, take the traceability and redressability elements of standing. After appearing intermittently in the case law for years, these elements were constitutionalized in Lujan v Defenders of Wildlife . 114 A plaintiff’s injury must be “fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant,” meaning that “there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of.” 115 Additionally, “it must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” 116

Traceability and redressability are often analyzed together; in fact, “[m]ost cases view redressability as an essentially automatic corollary of [traceability].” 117 Both relationships are also highly tractable because they explicitly require causation, which is precisely the kind of link that social science is able to demonstrate. The essential traceability issue is whether the defendant’s challenged action caused the plaintiff’s harm. Similarly, the crux of redressability is whether the plaintiff’s desired remedy will cause her harm to be cured. These are pure matters of causation, undiluted by any hint of means-end necessity or incommensurable balancing.

Given that standing doctrine is often deemed “[e]xtremely fuzzy and highly manipulable,” 118 some readers may be surprised by our favorable account. We do not mean to suggest that the causal questions posed by the doctrine—what impact certain measures have had or will have on a plaintiff—are easy to answer. The data needed to address these issues is often unavailable (or uncited), forcing courts to rely on their qualitative judgment. Even when rigorous evidence exists, there is no guarantee that courts will take it into account. Our claim, then, is only that the traceability and redressability elements are appealing in principle because of their emphasis on causation. In practice, the necessary causal inquiries may be difficult to conduct, or overlooked even when they are feasible.

Fewer of these caveats are required for our second example of a successful constitutional relationship: the Necessary and Proper Clause , which authorizes Congress to enact any laws that are “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its enumerated powers. 119 At first glance, the Clause appears to exemplify a poor relationship because it stipulates that a law must be “necessary” to be permissible. But the Court has held that “‘necessary’ does not mean necessary” in this context. 120 Instead, it means “convenient, or useful or conducive to the authority’s beneficial exercise.” 121 Under this standard, a law will be upheld if it “constitutes a means that is rationally related to the implementation of a constitutionally enumerated power.” 122

So construed, the Necessary and Proper Clause essentially demands that a statute be correlated with the promotion of a textually specified goal. That is, the statute must make the goal’s achievement at least somewhat more likely, or must lead to at least a somewhat higher level of the goal. Needless to say, it is relatively straightforward to identify a correlational link between a means and an end. Doing so, in fact, is one of the simpler tasks that can be asked of social science. This is why we approve of the sort of relationship that must be demonstrated under the Clause; it is the sort whose existence can be proven or rebutted with little room for debate.

However, we note that the Court has recently begun to revive the “Proper” in “Necessary and Proper”—and to infuse into it requirements other than a means-end correlation. In National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius , 123 in particular, the Court held that the Clause authorizes neither the exercise of “great” (as opposed to “incidental”) powers, nor the passage of “laws that undermine the structure of government established by the Constitution.” 124 We regard these developments as unfortunate. Both the significance of a power and a law’s consistency with our constitutional structure are normative matters that are poorly suited to empirical examination. The insertion of these issues into the doctrine has blurred what was previously an admirably clear relational picture.

Our inquiry into the social scientific disciplines of conceptualization and measurement suggests that they may have rich payoffs for lawyers. (To use a recurring term from our discussion, they are fecund.) Examining legal doctrines through the lens of conceptualization, we argue, allows us to evaluate what are good and bad concepts and relationships in law. We draw on one set of social science criteria for good concepts, which includes that they are resonant, have a stipulated domain, can be applied consistently, are fecund, are distinct from neighboring concepts, are useful, and can in principle be measured. Similarly, good relationships are those that involve causation or correlation, but not necessity or the weighing of incommensurable values.

We emphasize the criterion of potential measurability, which is another way of saying that courts should recognize concepts and relationships that are in principle verifiable. While in many cases this would be difficult to achieve in practice, the discipline of thinking in terms of whether X and Y can be reliably assessed, and whether X is linked to Y , would, we suspect, lead courts to greater consistency and thus predictability. In particular, our analysis suggests that courts should shy away from complex multipart tests that involve the ad hoc balancing of incommensurables. 125 Just as social scientists require dependable measures across cases, legal doctrines that are measurable can be subjected to productive scrutiny, potentially leading to more coherent application of the law. In short, important rule-of-law values can be advanced through an approach to law that draws on what some might see as an unlikely source—social scientific thinking.

• 10 See Goertz, Social Science Concepts at 28–30 (cited in note 5); Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 112–13 (cited in note 5).
• 11 The debate goes back to Aristotle. See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 114–15 (cited in note 5). See also Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence, Concepts (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 17, 2011), online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2012/entries/concepts (visited Dec 28, 2016) (Perma archive unavailable).
• 12 See Margolis and Laurence, Concepts (cited in note 11).
• 13 Goertz, Social Science Concepts at 5 (cited in note 5).
• 14 See Ecuador Const Art 71, translation archived at http://perma.cc/DKJ5-E3K8 (“Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”).
• 15 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 136–37 (cited in note 5), citing Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences 90 (Free Press 1949) (Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch, eds and trans).
• 16 Goertz, Social Science Concepts at 36 (cited in note 5).
• 17 Margolis and Laurence, Concepts (cited in note 11).
• 18 Cottrill v Sparrow, Johnson & Ursillo, Inc , 100 F3d 220, 225 (1st Cir 1996).
• 19 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 117–19 (cited in note 5). See also John Gerring, What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences , 31 Polity 357, 367 (1999) (offering a slightly different set of criteria).
• 20 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 117 (cited in note 5) (listing Gerring’s criteria of conceptualization).
• 21 See id at 117–19.
• 22 See id at 119–21.
• 23 See id at 121–24.
• 24 Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 124 (cited in note 5).
• 25 See id at 124–26.
• 26 See Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics 50–53 (Michigan 2003).
• 27 See José Antonio Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy 26–48 (Cambridge 2007).
• 28 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 127–30 (cited in note 5).
• 29 See id at 127.
• 30 See Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination 57–59 (Yale 1979) (discussing whether sexual harassment fits neatly into the sex discrimination category).
• 31 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 130–31 (cited in note 5).
• 32 See Goertz, Social Science Concepts at 4 (cited in note 5) (noting that the key features are relevance “for hypotheses, explanations, and causal mechanisms”).
• 33 See Gerring, Social Science Methodology at 156–57 (cited in note 5).
• 34 See Cottrill , 100 F3d at 225.
• 35 See Goertz, Social Science Concepts at 6 (cited in note 5).
• 36 See Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning , 26 Yale L J 710, 710 (1917).
• 37 See id at 710, 716–17.
• 38 See Alon Harel, Why Law Matters 46 (Oxford 2014).
• 39 See Ellery Eells, Probabilistic Causality 34–35 (Cambridge 1991).
• 40 But see Antony Honoré, Causation in the Law (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nov 17, 2010), online at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/causation-law (visited Jan 23, 2017) (Perma archive unavailable) (noting the complexity of the relationship between causing harm and legal responsibility).
• 41 See Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Council , 505 US 1003, 1027 (1992) (discussing under what circumstances a state “may resist compensation” for “regulation that deprives land of all economically beneficial use”).
• 42 Pub L No 90-284, 82 Stat 81 (1968), codified as amended at 42 USC § 3601 et seq.
• 43 Pub L No 88-352, 78 Stat 252, codified as amended at 42 USC § 2000d et seq.
• 44 See Metropolitan Housing Development Corp v Village of Arlington Heights , 558 F2d 1283, 1290–91 (7th Cir 1977).
• 45 Matthew Adler, Law and Incommensurability: Introduction , 146 U Pa L Rev 1169, 1170 (1998).
• 46 See McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission , 134 S Ct 1434, 1450 (2014) (Roberts) (plurality).
• 47 See, for example, Thomas F. Burke, The Concept of Corruption in Campaign Finance Law , 14 Const Commen 127, 128–35 (1997) (discussing three academic and three judicial definitions of corruption); Yasmin Dawood, Classifying Corruption , 9 Duke J Const L & Pub Pol 103, 106–32 (2014) (going through ten separate notions of corruption).
• 48 See, for example, McCutcheon , 134 S Ct at 1450 (Roberts) (plurality) (“Congress may target only a specific type of corruption[,] . . . large contributions that are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders.”) (quotation marks and brackets omitted).
• 49 See, for example, McConnell v Federal Election Commission , 540 US 93, 150 (2003) (“Congress’ legitimate interest extends beyond preventing simple cash-for-votes corruption to curbing undue influence on an officeholder’s judgment, and the appearance of such influence.”) (quotation marks omitted).
• 50 See, for example, Austin v Michigan State Chamber of Commerce , 494 US 652, 660 (1990) (recognizing “a different type of corruption in the political arena: the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form”).
• 51 Compare Citizens United v Federal Election Commission , 558 US 310, 361 (2010), with McConnell , 540 US at 203, and Austin , 494 US at 660.
• 52 As should be clear from this discussion, our critique is not that the Court has used inconsistent words to describe the same underlying concept . Rather, each of the Court’s definitions of corruption corresponds to an entirely different notion of what it means for elected officials to be corrupt.
• 53 See, for example, Burke, 14 Const Commen at 128 (cited in note 47) (“When corruption is proclaimed in political life it presumes some ideal state.”); Deborah Hellman, Defining Corruption and Constitutionalizing Democracy , 111 Mich L Rev 1385, 1389 (2013) (“[C]orruption is a derivative concept, meaning it depends on a theory of the institution or official involved.”).
• 54 See, for example, Nathaniel Persily and Kelli Lammie, Perceptions of Corruption and Campaign Finance: When Public Opinion Determines Constitutional Law , 153 U Pa L Rev 119, 145–48 (2004). See also Corruption Perceptions Index 2015 (Transparency International, Feb 1, 2016), archived at http://perma.cc/C4XQ-6CE3.
• 55 See, for example, Adriana Cordis and Jeff Milyo, Do State Campaign Finance Reforms Reduce Public Corruption? *11–16 (unpublished manuscript, Jan 2013), archived at http://perma.cc/9KRP-FC9C.
• 56 See id at *21–28; Persily and Lammie, 153 U Pa L Rev at 148–49 (cited in note 54).
• 57 As to the last of these values, see generally Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, Aligning Campaign Finance Law , 101 Va L Rev 1425 (2015).
• 58 Political powerlessness was first recognized as a factor in San Antonio Independent School District v Rodriguez , 411 US 1, 28 (1973).
• 59 See Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, Political Powerlessness , 90 NYU L Rev 1527, 1537–42 (2015) (discussing the various judicial versions of powerlessness).
• 60 See id at 1540 (“The crucial point about these definitions is that they are entirely inconsistent with one another.”). Accordingly, these are not just different ways of expressing the same underlying idea; rather, they are divergent accounts of what it means to be powerless in the first place. See note 52.
• 61 See, for example, Varnum v Brien , 763 NW2d 862, 888 (Iowa 2009) (pointing out “the flexible manner in which the Supreme Court has applied the four factors [relevant to suspect class status]”).
• 62 304 US 144 (1938).
• 63 Id at 152 n 4.
• 64 See Bruce A. Ackerman, Beyond Carolene Products, 98 Harv L Rev 713, 719 (1985) (“[G]enerations of American political scientists have filled in the picture of pluralist democracy presupposed by Carolene ’s distinctive argument for minority rights.”).
• 65 See Stephanopoulos, 90 NYU L Rev at 1549–54 (cited in note 59) (making this argument at length).
• 66 See, for example, Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America 57–66 (Princeton 2012).
• 67 See, for example, id at 77–87.
• 68 See Stephanopoulos, 90 NYU L Rev at 1583–84, 1590–92 (cited in note 59).
• 69 See, for example, Gilens, Affluence and Influence at 80–81 (cited in note 66); Patrick Flavin, Income Inequality and Policy Representation in the American States , 40 Am Polit Rsrch 29, 40–44 (2012).
• 70 See League of United Latin American Citizens v Perry , 548 US 399, 420 (2006) (Kennedy) (plurality) (“LULAC”); id at 466 (Stevens concurring in part and dissenting in part); id at 483 (Souter concurring in part and dissenting in part); id at 492 (Breyer concurring in part and dissenting in part).
• 71 Id at 466 (Stevens concurring in part and dissenting in part).
• 72 See Vieth v Jubelirer , 541 US 267, 285–86 (2004) (Scalia) (plurality).
• 73 See id at 271 n 1 (Scalia) (plurality) (noting that gerrymandering has been defined as “giv[ing] one political party an unfair advantage by diluting the opposition’s voting strength”).
• 74 Compare LULAC , 548 US at 466 (Stevens concurring in part and dissenting in part), with Bernard Grofman and Gary King, The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan Gerrymandering after LULAC v. Perry, 6 Election L J 2, 6 (2007).
• 75 See Grofman and King, 6 Election L J at 8 (cited in note 74) (“Measuring symmetry . . . does not require ‘proportional representation’ (where each party receives the same proportion of seats as it receives in votes).”).
• 76 See id at 10 (noting that symmetry is measured using “highly mature statistical methods [that] rely on well-tested and well-accepted statistical procedures”).
• 77 See LULAC , 548 US at 420 (Kennedy) (plurality) (criticizing partisan bias because it “may in large part depend on conjecture about where possible vote-switchers will reside”); Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos and Eric M. McGhee, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap , 82 U Chi L Rev 831, 865–67 (2015) (discussing the imputation of results for uncontested races).
• 78 These are partisan bias, which is the divergence in the share of seats that each party would win given the same share of the statewide vote, see Grofman and King, 6 Election L J at 6 (cited in note 74), and the efficiency gap, which is “the difference between the parties’ respective wasted votes, divided by the total number of votes cast,” Stephanopoulos and McGhee, 82 U Chi L Rev at 851 (cited in note 77) (emphasis omitted).
• 79 See Samuel Issacharoff, Polarized Voting and the Political Process: The Transformation of Voting Rights Jurisprudence , 90 Mich L Rev 1833, 1844 (1992) (noting the “absence of an overriding conception of the precise constitutional harm the courts were seeking to remedy” in this period).
• 80 See White v Regester , 412 US 755, 765–70 (1973); Zimmer v McKeithen , 485 F2d 1297, 1305–07 (5th Cir 1973).
• 81 See Thornburg v Gingles , 478 US 30, 51 (1986). Importantly, while the pre- Gingles vote dilution cases were brought under the Fourteenth Amendment, dilution cases from Gingles onward have generally been launched under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act, codified at 52 USC § 10301.
• 82 Gingles , 478 US at 62 (Brennan) (plurality).
• 83 See, for example, Growe v Emison , 507 US 25, 40 (1993).
• 84 Minority voters can be disproportionately burdened by an electoral regulation (say, a photo identification requirement) whether or not they are polarized from the white majority.
• 85 The Gingles Court noted that “courts and commentators agree that racial bloc voting is a key element of a vote dilution claim,” Gingles , 478 US at 55, and endorsed the district court’s use of “methods standard in the literature for the analysis of racially polarized voting,” id at 53 n 20.
• 86 Geographic compactness is also a prerequisite for liability for vote dilution, while responsiveness is a factor to be considered at the later totality-of-circumstances stage. See id at 45, 50.
• 87 See id at 52–53 (referring to “two complementary methods of analysis—extreme case analysis and bivariate ecological regression analysis”).
• 88 See, for example, League of United Latin American Citizens, Council No 4434 v Clements , 999 F2d 831, 854 (5th Cir 1993) (en banc).
• 89 See, for example, Christopher S. Elmendorf and Douglas M. Spencer, Administering Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act after Shelby County, 115 Colum L Rev 2143, 2195–2215 (2015).
• 90 See, for example, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Kevin M. Quinn, and Marisa A. Abrajano, Racially Polarized Voting , 83 U Chi L Rev 587, 611–19 (2016); Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, Civil Rights in a Desegregating America , 83 U Chi L Rev 1329, 1386–87 (2016).
• 91 See Ellen Katz, et al, Documenting Discrimination in Voting: Judicial Findings under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act since 1982 , 39 U Mich J L Ref 643, 663–75 (2006).
• 92 See, for example, Andrew Gelman and Gary King, Enhancing Democracy through Legislative Redistricting , 88 Am Polit Sci Rev 541, 545–46 (1994); Bernard Grofman, Michael Migalski, and Nicholas Noviello, The “Totality of Circumstances Test” in Section 2 of the 1982 Extension of the Voting Rights Act: A Social Science Perspective , 7 L & Pol 199, 202–09 (1985).
• 93 Adarand Constructors, Inc v Pena , 515 US 200, 230 (1995).
• 94 Ashcroft v American Civil Liberties Union , 542 US 656, 666 (2004).
• 95 See Richard H. Fallon Jr, Strict Judicial Scrutiny , 54 UCLA L Rev 1267, 1330 (2007). It is also worth clarifying how narrow tailoring fits into the terminology of words, concepts, and rules that we introduced earlier. We see it as a conceptual relationship , linking a challenged policy and an asserted governmental interest, that forms part of the doctrine of strict scrutiny.
• 96 See, for example, Adarand , 515 US at 227.
• 97 See, for example, Roe v Wade , 410 US 113, 155 (1973).
• 98 See, for example, Ashcroft , 542 US at 666.
• 99 See Lee Epstein and Gary King, The Rules of Inference , 69 U Chi L Rev 1, 2 (2002).
• 100 See Mark A. Graber, Unnecessary and Unintelligible , 12 Const Commen 167, 167 (1995) (“No necessary means exist in many cases for realizing certain purposes.”).
• 101 See Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos, Spatial Diversity , 125 Harv L Rev 1903, 1938 (2012).
• 102 Bendix Autolite Corp v Midwesco Enterprises, Inc , 486 US 888, 897 (1988) (Scalia concurring in the judgment).
• 103 United States v Virginia , 518 US 515, 533 (1996).
• 104 See, for example, id at 573–74 (Scalia dissenting).
• 105 Using our earlier terminology, the conceptual relationship here, between a challenged policy and an asserted governmental interest, essentially is the legal rule. This is not a problem for our analysis; it simply reflects the fact that doctrine is sometimes reducible to a single conceptual relationship.
• 106 See, for example, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey , 505 US 833, 874 (1992) (O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) (plurality) (“Only where state regulation imposes an undue burden on a woman’s ability to make this decision does the power of the State reach into the heart of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.”).
• 107 See, for example, Crawford v Marion County Election Board , 472 F3d 949, 950, 952–54 (7th Cir 2007) (applying a constitutional test assessing whether a law constitutes “an undue burden on the right to vote”).
• 108 See, for example, Granholm v Heald , 544 US 460, 493 (2005) (Stevens dissenting) (“[A] state law may violate the unwritten rules described as the ‘dormant Commerce Clause’ [ ] by imposing an undue burden on both out-of-state and local producers engaged in interstate activities.”).
• 109 505 US 833, 877 (1992) (O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) (plurality). See also Burdick v Takushi , 504 US 428, 434 (1992) (focusing on “the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments”).
• 110 Casey , 505 US at 878 (O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) (plurality). See also Burdick , 504 US at 434 (inquiring into whether the policy imposing the burden is “narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of compelling importance”).
• 111 Pike v Bruce Church, Inc , 397 US 137, 142 (1970). See also Storer v Brown , 415 US 724, 730 (1974) (commenting that there is “no litmus-paper test” for voting regulations, and that “[d]ecision in this context . . . is very much a matter of degree”) (quotation marks omitted).
• 112 By “doctrinal progress,” we simply mean articulating a more effective conceptual relationship. Of course, improvement on this axis may result in trade-offs along other dimensions.
• 113 See, for example, Burdick , 504 US at 434 (“[T]he rigorousness of our inquiry into the propriety of a state election law depends upon the extent to which a challenged regulation burdens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”).
• 114 504 US 555 (1992).
• 115 Id at 560 (brackets and ellipsis omitted).
• 116 Id at 561 (quotation marks omitted).
• 117 Richard M. Re, Relative Standing , 102 Georgetown L J 1191, 1217 (2014). See also Massachusetts v Environmental Protection Agency , 549 US 497, 543 (2007) (Roberts dissenting) (“As is often the case, the questions of causation and redressability overlap.”).
• 118 Cass R. Sunstein, What’s Standing after Lujan ? Of Citizen Suits, “Injuries,” and Article III , 91 Mich L Rev 163, 228 (1992).
• 119 US Const Art I, § 8, cl 18. Here too, the conceptual relationship essentially is the legal rule itself. See note 105.
• 120 Graber, 12 Const Commen at 170 (cited in note 100). See also, for example, United States v Comstock , 560 US 126, 134 (2010) (“[T]he word ‘necessary’ does not mean ‘absolutely necessary.’”).
• 121 Comstock , 560 US at 133–34 (quotation marks omitted). See also National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius , 132 S Ct 2566, 2591–92 (2012).
• 122 Comstock , 560 US at 134.
• 123 132 S Ct 2566 (2012).
• 124 Id at 2591–92 (quotation marks omitted).
• 125 For further discussion of this point, see Richard A. Posner, Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary 117–21 (Harvard 2016).

Thanks to Jake Gersen, Todd Henderson, Daryl Levinson, Jens Ludwig, Richard McAdams, Tom Miles, Matthew Stephenson, David Strauss, Adrian Vermeule, Noah Zatz, and participants at a workshop at The University of Chicago Law School for helpful comments.

We are grateful to Susan Bandes, Elizabeth Foote, Jacob Gersen, Brian Leiter, Anup Malani, Richard McAdams, Elizabeth Mertz, Jonathan Nash, Eric Posner, Adam Samaha, Larry Solum, David Strauss, Noah Zatz, and participants in a work-inprogress lunch at The University of Chicago Law School for valuable comments. We are also grateful to the Chicago Judges Project, and in particular to Dean Saul Levmore, for relevant support.

We thank Eric Posner, Richard Posner, Peter Strauss, and Adrian Vermeule for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Rachael Dizard, Casey Fronk, Darius Horton, Matthew Johnson, Bryan Mulder, Brett Reynolds, Matthew Tokson, and Adam Wells for superb research assistance.

• Contributors

Lawyers as Professionals and Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st Century

Ben W. Heineman, Jr. is a former GE senior vice president for law and public affairs and a senior fellow at Harvard University’s schools of law and government. This post is based on an essay by Mr. Heineman, William F. Lee , and David B. Wilkins ; the complete publication is available here .

We have written a detailed essay presenting practical vision of the responsibilities of lawyers as both professionals and as citizens at the beginning of the 21 st century. Specifically, we seek to define and give content to four ethical responsibilities that we believe are of signal importance to lawyers in their fundamental roles as expert technicians, wise counselors, and effective leaders: responsibilities to their clients and stakeholders; responsibilities to the legal system; responsibilities to their institutions; and responsibilities to society at large. Our fundamental point is that the ethical dimensions of lawyering for this era must be given equal attention to—and must be highlighted and integrated with—the significant economic, political, and cultural changes affecting major legal institutions and the people and institutions lawyers serve.

We have chosen to write this essay as a joint statement from a former general counsel of a global corporation, a former managing partner of an international law firm, and a professor of the legal profession at a major law school. We therefore focus our discussion on the four ethical duties in the institutions we know best—corporate legal departments, large law firms, and leading law schools—and on the important connections among them. But we also hope that both the ethical framework we propose and our commitment to a shared responsibility for giving it practical effect will have resonance in the many other important settings in which lawyers work. The four duties are, we believe, central to what it means to be a lawyer, even as the practical expression of these responsibilities will undoubtedly vary by context and will require new and greater collaboration that reaches across many of the profession’s traditional divides.

In presenting our views, we are mindful of the dramatic changes in both the legal profession and in society that make the realization of our—or any other—ethical vision of lawyering especially difficult today. There is widespread agreement that the legal profession is in a period of stress and transition; its economic models are under duress; the concepts of its professional uniqueness are narrow and outdated; and, as a result, its ethical imperatives are weakened and their sources ill-defined. We are also mindful that some will resist the invitation to review and address the broad array of ethical issues we raise in a time in which so many of the profession’s traditional economic assumptions are in question. Nevertheless, we reject the idea that there is an inherent and irresolvable conflict between “business” and “service.” To the contrary, we believe that, while tradeoffs about resource allocation will certainly be required, the proper recognition of each of the four ethical duties we explore is ultimately essential to the sustainability of “business”—whether that is the “business” of companies, law firms, or law schools, or more broadly, the health of our economic and political system as a whole. We therefore hope that this essay will stimulate an integrated discussion among the broad range of actors with a stake in the future of the legal profession not just about the pressing economic issues in major legal institutions but also about the equally pressing concerns relating to ethical responsibilities.

The essay has six parts.

We first set out our basic framework. It explicates lawyers’ three fundamental roles as expert technicians, wise counselors, and effective leaders. It describes the sources and broad definitions of lawyers’ four responsibilities: duties to clients and stakeholders; duties to the legal system; duties to one’s own institution; and duties to the broader society. To effectively discharge these responsibilities, it argues that lawyers must not only have “core” legal competencies but also “complementary” competencies involving broad vision, knowledge, and organizational skills that, while not unique to lawyers, are essential to the counseling and leadership roles. This Part thus describes how our framework goes beyond the limits of the bar’s formal ethical rules and challenges lawyers as both professionals and as citizens.

Second, we describe the context for our analysis. While recognizing the profound importance of other entities, we explain that we have chosen leading companies, law firms, and law schools as the focus of our analysis because of their influence in setting norms for lawyers, their role in providing counselors and leaders across society, and their standing in public perception of the law. It outlines our assumptions about the large-scale forces transforming the economics of these institutions. These include accelerating competition, costs, technology development and transparency—and, in the case of companies and firms, undue focus on short-term profit maximization and profits per partner. All these factors gain greater force from globalization. A final contextual dimension is the cost and paradox of regulation of the legal profession: increasing the cost of becoming a lawyer while reducing the competition from other more effective and efficient providers of legal or legally related services. And, while noting that efforts to discharge the four responsibilities will entail allocation of resources and trade-offs, we maintain that forging a new, contemporary partnership between “service” and “business” is essential to the success, sustainability, and durability of these institutions.

Third, we discuss corporate law departments. Due to major trends in recent decades—the General Counsel becoming the senior counselor to boards and CEOs and the shift of power over money and matters from outside law firms to inside law departments—the General Counsel and inside lawyers have a special obligation to give practical meaning to the four responsibilities in leading corporations. The overarching theme of this Part is that the purpose of corporations, especially transnational ones, is the fusion of high performance with high integrity. Integrity is defined as ensuring robust adherence to formal rules, establishing binding ethical standards, advocating balanced public policy and fair political processes, and instilling the values of honesty, candor, fairness, reliability, and trustworthiness in employees. The General Counsel should also have a broad scope beyond law to include ethics, reputation, and geopolitical risk and should function as expert, counselor, and leader to assist the board and the business leaders in establishing an integrity culture in the institution. The General Counsel and all inside lawyers should aspire to be “lawyer-statespersons” who ask first “is it legal” but ask last “is it right,” and who can resolve the central tension of being both a partner to the business leader and the ultimate guardian of the corporation’s integrity. Inside lawyers have a special calling to surface, analyze, and recommend actions relating both to the corporation’s employees and to other stakeholders that go beyond what the formal legal and accounting rules require and that address the many ethical issues facing global business in challenging environments. Finally, inside lawyers must recognize that they have a shared responsibility—and the obligation to share costs—with firms to provide challenging experiences and training for young lawyers. They must also use their influence (through, for example, new supplier guidelines) to encourage law firms to join with companies in addressing vital issues like provision of pro bono services, diversity, and needed reforms in the legal system both at home and abroad by making these issues important considerations in firm retention.

Fourth, we address law firms and the imbalance between “service” and “business” that has resulted from a myopic focus on short-term economics. To be sure, there have been benefits to the profession from increased transparency concerning operation of firms and the resulting increased competition among firms. But the relentless focus on short-term economic success has adversely affected the culture and institutional integrity of firms; the training, mentoring, and development of young lawyers; the ability of firms and their lawyers to service the poor and underprivileged; and the ability of firms and their lawyers to devote time to the profession and the broader needs of society. We urge a rebalancing of the sometimes competing goals of “economic” and “professional” success. This rebalancing will require leadership and vision which will (1) affirm the priority of excellence and quality over mere hours generation; (2) articulate a vision for and create a culture which revives and restores the institutional fabric of firms; (3) affirm the commitment to meaningful mentoring and development of young lawyers; (4) affirm the commitment to the profession, including pro bono services and the “Rule of Law”; and (5) affirm the role of lawyers as the architects of a well-functioning constitutional democracy. This rebalancing will not be easy and will require commitment to long-term goals and values, even at the expense of short-term economics.

Fifth, we turn our attention to the implications of our framework for “leading” law schools. We begin from the premise that law schools play a critical—but not exclusive—role both in teaching students to become expert technicians, wise counselors, and astute leaders, and in generating knowledge about law and legal institutions (including about the legal profession itself), and about the relationship between these institutions and the health and welfare of the broader society. To achieve these twin goals—and to find a proper balance between the two—law schools should reexamine how they are preparing students for the challenges that they will face throughout their increasingly diverse careers, and how faculty members understand their obligations to the legal framework and society, and to the law school as an institution. With respect to educating students, we urge law schools to create courses that focus directly on teaching lawyering roles and responsibilities in specific contexts and that explore key complementary competencies. We also advocate breaking down the artificial barriers that currently exist between “theory” and “practice,” and between “law” and other disciplines, by developing new teaching materials (for example “business school” style case studies), new faculty (for example, Professors of Practice with significant experience outside of the academy, and team teaching with faculty from other disciplines), and a new integration between the placement function and the core educational objectives of the school. To achieve these goals, we put forward a number of specific reforms designed to restructure and refocus the third year of law school, while rejecting calls to eliminate it altogether. Finally, we underscore the critical need for deans and faculty to rededicate themselves to articulating a broad but nevertheless common understanding of the purposes of legal education and legal scholarship that gives appropriate recognition to the role that law schools—and law professors—play as part of the legal profession in addition to their role as an important part of the academy. Faculty and administrators should then use this purpose to guide the difficult tradeoffs around hiring, promotion, curricula, research, funding, and the allocation of other scarce resources that will inevitably be required to begin to achieve these common goals.

Finally, we briefly discuss ways in which leading corporate law departments, law firms, and law schools can collaborate jointly to address the needs of young lawyers, to act on the needs of the legal system and society, to bridge the divide between the profession and the professoriate, and to develop better information on lawyers and the legal profession both here and abroad. It sets out next steps which include seeking short, written comments from leading thinkers which will be published early next year and holding a conference to discuss the issues raised both in this essay and in the comments at Harvard Law School in the first half of 2015.

The complete publication is available here .

Supported By:

Subscribe or Follow

Program on corporate governance advisory board.

• William Ackman
• Peter Atkins
• Kerry E. Berchem
• Richard Brand
• Daniel Burch
• Arthur B. Crozier
• Renata J. Ferrari
• John Finley
• Carolyn Frantz
• Andrew Freedman
• Byron Georgiou
• Joseph Hall
• Jason M. Halper
• David Millstone
• Theodore Mirvis
• Maria Moats
• Erika Moore
• Morton Pierce
• Philip Richter
• Marc Trevino
• Steven J. Williams
• Daniel Wolf

HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows

• Lucian Bebchuk
• Robert Clark
• John Coates
• Stephen M. Davis
• Allen Ferrell
• Jesse Fried
• Oliver Hart
• Howell Jackson
• Kobi Kastiel
• Reinier Kraakman
• Mark Ramseyer
• Robert Sitkoff
• Holger Spamann
• Leo E. Strine, Jr.
• Guhan Subramanian
• Roberto Tallarita

How To Write Law Essay?

23 October, 2020

8 minutes read

Author:  Elizabeth Brown

If you are a law student, you have probably already faced the question of how to write an essay on this discipline. This is not an easy task because the requirements for a law essay often differ. In addition, you need to state your position and back it up with arguments clearly for others to understand. And to help you facilitate this process, we offer some preparation tips and tricks so that you could craft a decent work.

First things first, let’s discuss the legal essay scheme. It is rightly similar to the social science essay scheme. In both papers, it is necessary to explain a position on a particular issue or comment on a statement. For university law essay, especially in cases of specialties, it’s more complicated. There are several legal essay types :

• essay on quote explanation . Like in a school essay, the task here is to reveal the meaning of the expression and give a reasoned agreement or disagreement with it.
• essay on legal theory. The essence of this task is to describe one of the theories of law or any jurisprudence. This can be anything – for example, the theory that touches the Fifth Amendment.
• jurisprudence essay. In this assignment, you should review a specific case study or analyze the given document. Here, it’s important to adhere to special structure: first read the case, comprehend it, and only then give a critical account of this or that piece.

Law Essay Outline

The outline is one of the essential parts of law essay writing. At the point of creating it, you should jot down the structure of the main argument for each and every statement you deem appropriate for a text. This way, it’ll be much easier for you to organize the legal paper and facilitate its readability . 

For example, if you need to comment on the quotation, it’s better to start an essay with brief information about the author. Then, consider the meaning of the citation in the context of his time and compare it to current conditions, as well as note whether you agree with the statement or not. Remember – the main task is to have a solid opinion in which you’re 100% confident. If not, switch the quote.

In the essay on legal theory, state the history of the issue, highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the case you are analyzing. Try to draw a parallel with the present, to indicate how relevant it is now for contemporary law students.

While reviewing a specific legal case or document, you should not be distracted by elements irrelevant or unrelated to the subject and give descriptions of similar situations. Consistently assess the actions of subjects or conduct an in-depth analysis of the provided regulation.

Write all of the crucial points in a short plan and shorten the above information into a couple of sentences. Afterward, you’ll be ready to use the crafted outline and write a law essay according to its key points . 

Law Essay Structure

1. Introduction

Like any other type of writing, law essays start with introduction. A successful lead in is the one that captures attention instantly and forces readers to become interested in the law topic. In the beginning, you’ll need to clearly and precisely formulate a thesis statement of the entire piece, which you will then reveal in the following text. A great way to elaborate mediocre introduction with engaging filling is to state a concrete problem, controversy or issue that needs to be resolved.  

2. Main part

This is the main element of the whole legal essay. It should contain an analysis of the quotation, legal theory, specific case, or document. Plus, your opinions about this or that aspect should be argued: for example, by references to other papers or practices. Another beneficial way to develop the main body of your essay is to use specific examples from law classes, including activities and important discussions , if applicable. Also, don’t forget that your law essay should always follow the thesis and develop it throughout the legal paper. This is a critical point to consider, as any departure from the established scheme will distort your work’s content.

3. Conclusion

Your finishing remarks should formulate the outcome of what was written above. A reasonable conclusion should be brief and powerful , as well as connected to the introduction. Besides, a good ending should contain a thesis of the whole law essay. However, don’t try to repeat your thesis word by word. Consider rephrasing it instead of mentioning the same statements so that the information is more easily digested for readers. Plus, you’ll need to provide a critical analysis of your work. For this, explain why your main argument backed up by primary and secondary sources is the highest point of conviction. Hence, your readers will see explicit reasoning and be more inclined to believe the truth you outlined in the paper. 

4. Bibliography

A bibliography is a mandatory part of the work, and also the last one. At the end of your essay, you should list the documents (laws and other regulations) and books that were used in preparation for the article. Works cited page will help you validate the credibility of work and show readers that all statements and opinions are proven with relevant evidence. However, it doesn’t mean that your bibliography ought to be inserted just after you’ve written the entire text. To have a better vision of what source to pick for citing, include the list of used materials before writing the final version of your law essay. Accordingly, you’ll see sources in their entirety and easily cite them whenever needed. 

The sayings of influential and famous people imbue any work with an air of authority . This is especially true for essays on law: professors appreciate it when students reinforce their considerations with the opinion of leaders and experts in their field.

Quotes for an essay on law are quite easy to find on the Internet or specialized digests.

If you choose to close the paper with a quote, it’ll be a great hook which will keep readers impressed by the essay long after they digest it. But feel free to add meaningful sayings also in the introduction or in the middle of a paper. Either way, quotes are a tool that helps make your reading highly impactful and appreciated.  

These were the top advice on how to create a distinct law paper. We hope our advice will help you prepare an interesting and informative essay for college or university studies that’ll be graded with the highest mark. Once you manage to operate on the subtle art of legal essay writing, you’ll adjust to the complexities of its realization without difficulties. If you’re in doubt questioning your writing abilities, use custom essay writer service – we will create the best law essay tailored specifically for you.

A life lesson in Romeo and Juliet taught by death

Due to human nature, we draw conclusions only when life gives us a lesson since the experience of others is not so effective and powerful. Therefore, when analyzing and sorting out common problems we face, we may trace a parallel with well-known book characters or real historical figures. Moreover, we often compare our situations with […]

Ethical Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on ethics is not an easy task, especially if you do not possess excellent writing skills and do not like to contemplate controversial questions. But an ethics course is obligatory in all higher education institutions, and students have to look for a way out and be creative. When you find an […]

Art Research Paper Topics

Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

College Application Essay Tips for Aspiring Lawyers

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Alexander Oddo in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

Describe your reasons why, career goals, the personal statement.

Your aspirations are an important component of what makes you who you are, and if you aspire to become a lawyer, you should share this information with any college or university that you apply to. In the college application process, essays are the best opportunity for you to discuss your passion for the law and your interest in becoming a lawyer. You may incorporate your legal aspirations into your personal statement or they may form the backbone of your supplemental essays where you respond to questions about why you are interested in a particular school, program, or major.

Generally speaking, a smart way to approach your essays is to introduce your interests and connect them to specific personal stories and goals. As a person who aspires to be a lawyer, you want to introduce your interests that relate to the law and describe what attracts you to the legal field. What is it about studying the law and becoming a lawyer that you find most compelling? Why does this path feel meaningful and necessary to you? Draw on specific experiences in your life and lessons you have learned to formulate your rationale for pursuing this career path. 

When you explain why you aspire to be a lawyer, be as specific as possible. “ Lawyers help people. The legal profession is lucrative.” These reasons are too simplistic and generic to provide any useful insight for an admissions officer to understand who you are. If you want to become a lawyer, you should explain your motivation to pursue this career path in terms of: 

• Why you want to help others and who you want to help, such as immigrants or victims of domestic violence
• What areas of the law interest you, such as tax law, family law, or corporate law
• What it is about studying and practicing law that appeals to you intellectually, such as that you have an analytical mind and enjoy solving complex problems
• What disciplinary perspectives you find interesting in relation to the law, such as history, philosophy, political science, public policy, or criminology 
• What experiences you have had and people you have met that have inspired you to pursue a legal career. Any experiences you cite should extend beyond your favorite episode of “Law and Order” or “How to Get Away with Murder.” Maybe a movie or TV show about the law initially sparked your interest, but then you developed this interest into an enduring passion by volunteering at your local courthouse, joining your high school’s mock trial team, or becoming certified as a paralegal. 

After you have thoroughly explained why you are interested in becoming a lawyer, you should look to the future and discuss your career goals. Identify a specific area of the law that you want to practice, and ground this in the various reasons why you want to become a lawyer. It is completely fine if you are not entirely sure what area of law you want to practice. Regardless, the winning strategy is to pick a specific area of law that you want to pursue and cite this consistently throughout your college applications. It will allow you to construct an application that is specific, developed, and memorable rather than overly general, unfocused, and potentially forgettable.

Ultimately, colleges and admissions officers will not hold you accountable for matching the goals and plans you outline in your essays. You are free to start college and decide that you don’t want to pursue a legal career at all. You should know before you apply to and attend law school whether you want to practice law, but undergraduate institutions recognize that you are young and still trying to explore your interests and define your goals. If you do pivot, admissions officers will rest assured because they know you have been through the process of creating a goal and that you can go through this process in any field you choose. 

If you are applying to a school that does not have any supplemental essays as part of its application, then you should discuss your legal aspirations in your Common Application personal statement. Your personal statement is the place in your application where you share your personal story, and you should tell this story in such a way that you weave your past, present, and future together. When you discuss your future, include some information about your interest in becoming a lawyer, drawing connections between this goal and your past experiences and present endeavors that inform and relate to your aspirations.

For more information, review this comprehensive guide on How to Write the Common Application Essays for the 2022-2023 application cycle.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Lawyer — The Profession of a Lawyer

The Profession of a Lawyer

• Categories: Career Job Lawyer

About this sample

Words: 1068 |

Published: Mar 14, 2019

Words: 1068 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

• Attend legal conferences, exhibitions, master classes, book presentations and similar events. Choose highly specialized, for example, in the field of concluding transactions, real estate, etc. – those that relate to your work topic. Do not miss the speeches of authorities in law, even if their speeches are not directly related to your topic.
• Take the training programs that are conducted by lawyer chambers. You can go there to lawyers without the status of a lawyer and students. You can refer to such events in a conversation with a potential employer, which will increase your “expertise” in his eyes.
• Take part in advanced training courses, which also take the form of conferences, master classes, seminars, roundtables, etc.
• Find the leading professional communities in social networks and join them. Save the bookmark links to the forums. Do not hesitate to clarify and ask questions if you do not understand something.
• About what you need to track the news in legislative changes, you already know.
• Do not seek immediately for a huge salary. No one will ever pay you big money until you prove that you really are worth it.
• Learn to listen and clearly formulate questions and conclusions.
• Train assiduity and watch your eyes: you will have to read a lot.

Works Cited

• CareerBuilder. (2021). How to become a lawyer: a step-by-step guide. https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/how-to-become-a-lawyer-a-step-by-step-guide
• Clifford Chance. (2019). Starting out: a beginner's guide to a career in law. https://www.cliffordchance.com/careers/careers-in-law/a-beginners-guide-to-a-career-in-law.html
• Cornell Law School. (2021). 10 steps to a successful legal career.
• FindLaw. (2021). How to become a lawyer. https://careers.findlaw.com/how-to-become-a-lawyer.html
• LawCareers.Net. (2021). Beginner's guide to a legal career.
• Law Society of England and Wales. (2021). Becoming a solicitor.
• Lawyers Weekly. (2019). How to start your legal career: five tips from lawyers.
• National Association for Law Placement. (2021). Job search basics.
• The Balance Careers. (2021). How to start a career in law.
• The Law Society of Scotland. (2021). Routes to qualifying as a solicitor.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Life Law, Crime & Punishment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1647 words

3 pages / 1509 words

1 pages / 820 words

2 pages / 1039 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Lawyer

Becoming a lawyer has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. The idea of advocating for justice, defending the rights of individuals, and making a positive impact on society through the legal system has always [...]

My passion for pursuing a career in law stems from a deep-rooted interest in understanding our legal system. When asked, 'why I want to become a lawyer,' I reflect upon my growth as an individual and my eagerness to comprehend [...]

Anthony Capozzi was convicted and sentenced to 20 years, however, there was no physical evidence linking him to the rapes in Buffalo, New York, in the 1980s. The crime involved several women and happened along a bike path in [...]

In Herman Melville’s story story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, a lawyer tells the story of a strange scrivener that had once worked for him. The scrivener, Bartleby, is strange because of his refusal to do anything with the calm [...]

An advocate gives support to anyone who finds it difficult to have their views heard. They offer time and commitment, help them to convey their wishes, make informed choices and gain greater control of their lives. It can help [...]

When one is asked to name a famous person who changed America, they will usually state the obvious: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln; some would even go back to the very founding of the country and [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

What I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming a Lawyer

• Dustin S. McCrary

There is always going to be more work — we can’t say the same about our health.

In the past few years, we’ve learned how common burnout is. In this article, the author opens up about their experience of prioritizing their job as a lawyer over their own mental health, and shares some strategies young lawyers or new grads can use to avoid falling into this trap.

• Before taking a job, gauge the company culture. If you take a job in a work environment that doesn’t value you beyond your skills or take care of your psychological health, it’s going to be unsustainable in the long run.
• Don’t ignore your physical triggers. If you feel stressed during your workday, practice small things like staying hydrated, breathing deeply for a few seconds, or taking a short walk around your office to physically disconnect.
• The hard truth is that the legal profession is extremely draining. So, build a life outside work. This could look like taking regular time off such as vacation or personal days. Another option is to look for hobbies and activities outside work that energize you and give you joy.
• Finally, give yourself a little grace. At the end of the day, remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

When I started law school, I loved it. The hypercompetitive classroom, the demanding coursework, and the adrenaline rush of solving complex cases drove me to pursue this career. Once I officially earned the job title “lawyer,” I was drawn even more to the fast-paced work culture. I wanted to stand out, make a difference, and find my own niche. My work was my passion and it empowered me.

• Dustin S. McCrary  is the founder of the Law Office of Dustin S. McCrary, PLLC based in Statesville, N.C. He focuses his practice on the legal needs of divorce and separation serving his clients in all aspects of the process including separation, child custody, child support, alimony and spousal support, property distribution, and domestic violence. McCrary recently published a new book called “Helping Your Children Cope with Divorce.”

Partner Center

legal papers

Primary tabs.

Legal papers are documents regarding some sort of contractual relationship or some other rights . They are legal instruments , official documents, or some other type of important document. Usually, these documents concern authority , identity, legal status, ownership , or some other type of evidence for some sort of obligations. Examples of these documents include birth certificates, contracts , deeds , leases , titles , wills , etc. During a trial or in preparation of a trial , documents such as a complaint or a summons can also be referred to as legal papers. Additionally, in a general sense, a legal paper can refer to a simple document that is about any legal matter, such as a document written by a lawyer. It can also be a legally valid document. The general effects of these documents are that they affect and concern the legal rights of the people involved. Specific types of legal papers include but are not limited to articles of incorporation , derivative instruments, negotiable instruments, passports , ship’s papers , manifest , debenture , power of attorney , letters of administration , letters testamentary , working papers, enactment, bills, legal briefs , testaments , assignments , conveyances , income tax returns , l icenses , letters of patent , judgements , acquittances , judicial writ , affidavits , articles of impeachment , certificates , etc.

[Last updated in June of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

• THE LEGAL PROCESS
• civil procedure
• wex definitions

Law Simplified

The Five Functions Of The Lawyer:  Arthur T. Vanderbilt

Arthur T. Vanderbilt (July 7, 1888 – June 16, 1957) was the first Chief Justice of New Jersey Supreme Court from 1948 to 1957, the first Chief Justice under the revamped New Jersey court system established by the Constitution of 1947, in which the Supreme Court replaced the old court of Errors and Appeals as the highest court. 

He was also an attorney, legal educator and proponent of court modernization. He was born in Newark, New Jersey. He was the President of American Bar Association from 1937 – 1938, Dean for many years – of New York University Law School, delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1936, 1940 and 1944. 

Arthur T. Vanderbilt was also awarded 32 honorary degrees and also the American Bar Association Gold Medal. Many of these court reforms were incorporated into the new judicial article of the New Jersey Constitution like designation of the Chief Justice as the administrative head of all courts in the state. As Chief Justice, he created the first State Administrative Office of the Courts in the nation.

Arthur T. Vanderbilt identifies five functions which if a lawyer follows then he will surely become a great lawyer. 

They are as follows –

• Counseling – First of all a truly great lawyer is a wise counsellor to men in their crises. A lawyer must possess a sound knowledge of the principles of law to provide effective counselling. A lawyer must also have a wide and deep knowledge of human nature and of modern society.
• Good advocacy skills – a lawyer must be skilled in the art of advocacy and Well-trained in defending the legal rights of his clients both in the trial courts and on appeal. A lawyer must be well experienced so that he can defend his client and help the court in proceedings. 

Advocacy is not the gift of god it involves general distinct arts which must be studied and mastered. Constant reading and assimilation of facts and modern trends in the field of law will go a long way in helping a lawyer to develop the skill of advocacy.

• Giving back to the profession that gave him the status – a lawyer should focus on improving his profession individually and as a member of the organized Bar. Every man has the duty to build up the profession to which he belongs. The advances in natural science and technology and the changes in business and in social life are so startling(चौंकाने वाला) that a lawyer must improve his profession to keep pace with them. The law schools also must come forward to perform their task in helping the young lawyers to face the challenges of the profession.
• Offering wide advice when the public needs it – The fourth function of a lawyer is to act as an intelligent and Unselfish leader of public opinion. Sound public opinion is so indispensable(very important) that it can even change the course(track) of history. 

The author cites an example from Charles Lindbergh’s warning about the war plans in Germany, over six months before the outbreak of World War II. If the news of Charles Lindbergh had been supported by strong public opinion, the course of history would have been different.

• Taking up government posts when it comes in order to save society – when in certain circumstances the standards of public life start deteriorating, the author makes a very strong plea for the lawyers to take up public office whenever there is a call. The professional thoughts and brilliance of a lawyer should not end in his own private clients. A lawyer with his profound knowledge in human relations and social conditions, can easily solve many of the problems of the day.

Therefore, These are the five important functions of a great lawyer. Education in these five functions of the lawyer is partly the sector of the college, partly the duty of the law school, but in large measure it is the responsibility of the individual lawyer.

• In the court: Anton Chekov
• The Language of the Law: Urban A. Lavery | Summary

Related Posts

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• world affairs

A Modi Win Will Only Mean More Trouble for Indian Muslims

M ore than two years have passed since a picture of me, picked up from my personal social media handles, was put up with a price tag for auction on the internet. It was part of a website called Bulli Bai , a religious slur used for Muslim women in India. 

Why was I targeted? Likely because of my reporting. The perpetrators wanted to shame and humiliate a journalist who was determined to expose the failures of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s gender, caste, and religion-based violence. But more importantly, they wanted to shut up a Muslim woman who had dared to be vocal in Modi’s India.

When the photo was posted, I wondered how the main perpetrator , a 21-year-old student from Assam, who created Bulli Bai could be so consumed by his hatred that he felt compelled to auction Muslim women online for their outspoken criticism of the BJP—journalists, social workers, actors, and politicians. A recent meeting with my lawyer about my case against the Bulli Bai creators, who are still being investigated by the Delhi police, was a painful reminder of the targeted harassment faced by outspoken Muslim voices critical of the ruling BJP. 

As the ongoing election in India is set to finish on June 1, it has once again offered deeper insight into how political dialogue is fueling this culture of hate. 

Particularly, the political campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP has leaned into anti-Muslim sentiment, progressively making Islamophobia one of the defining features of this election.

It was most prominently on display when Modi, in a thinly veiled reference to Muslims, referred to the 200 million Indian Muslim population as “infiltrators” at a BJP campaign rally while addressing voters in the Western state of Rajasthan on April 21. The Prime Minister also accused the opposition Congress party of planning to distribute the country’s wealth to Muslims.

Modi, in his speech, asked, “Earlier, when his [ former Prime Minister and Congress Party member Manmohan Singh’s] government was in power , he had said that Muslims have the first right on the country’s property, which means who they will collect this property and distribute it to—those who have more children, will distribute it to the infiltrators. Will the money of your hard work be given to the infiltrators? Do you approve of this?”

Read More: How India’s Hindu Nationalists Are Weaponizing History Against Muslims

This 2006 statement by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasizing that minorities, particularly Muslims , should have the first claim on resources to help uplift their socio-economic status, has been often quoted out of context in political rhetoric, distorting its original intent to uplift marginalized communities.

The reemergence of conspiracy theories like “Love Jihad,” alleging a covert agenda by Muslim men to ensnare and convert Hindu women, by Modi, has surged back into public attention, prominently surfacing at an election rally on May 28, days before the seventh and last phase of the ongoing elections, in the Eastern state of Jharkhand . 

The alarming rhetoric about Muslim population growth too have dominated the election discourse, fueled by the BJP's top leader, Modi, who has been criticized for his Islamophobic remarks, evoking memories of Gujarat's 2002 riots. While he later denied singling out Muslims in an interview with an Indian news channel, his history of linking them to population growth fuels a Hindu-majoritarian conspiracy theory.

Following the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during his tenure as chief minister, Modi faced scrutiny regarding his administration's lack of assistance to relief camps, predominantly established by non-profit organizations and Muslim communities. During a campaign rally, Modi then insinuated that these camps might transform into "baby factories," implying that Muslims could potentially have families as large as 25 children.

In his Jharkhand rally in May of this year, Modi spoke of "unseen enemies" working to divide society and claimed that the opposition parties were playing into the hands of “infiltrators”. He warned against "Zalim (cruel) love," alluding to Love Jihad. 

As the elections progressed, Modi’s speeches transformed slowly from issues such as “development” to anti-Muslim rhetoric. Unlike previous elections, Modi's campaign strategy this time has shifted towards overt Hindu-Muslim politics, drawing attention to his past record and raising concerns among Indian Muslims, as evidenced by the Election Commission's intervention in a campaign video by the BJP inciting hatred against Muslims. 

The video, shared by BJP Karnataka wing with a cautionary message in Kannada, depicted a cartoon version of Congress’s Rahul Gandhi placing an egg marked "Muslims" into a nest alongside smaller eggs labeled with categories such as "Scheduled Castes," "Scheduled Tribes," and "Other Backward Castes.” The narrative unfolds as the "Muslim" hatchling is shown being nourished with financial resources, eventually growing larger and displacing the other hatchlings from the nest—implying that a Congress government will give away all resources to Muslims. 

This came days after another animated video shared by the BJP’s official Instagram handle was removed on May 1 after a large number of users of the platform reported the video for “false information” and “hate speech.” The video repeats the BJP’s rhetoric on the Congress party, who they allege are“empowering people who belong to the very same community [of] invaders, terrorists, robbers and thieves [who] used to loot all our treasures” while the voice-over says, “If Congress comes to power, it will snatch all the money and wealth from non-Muslims and distribute them among Muslims, their favorite community.” 

Despite its controversial content, the video amassed over 100 thousand likes before being removed.

Both videos come after claims by Modi during his campaign speeches that Congress was planning to “steal” reservations in educational institutes and government jobs among other benefits from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Castes and redistribute them to Muslims.

Modi may be the foremost leader, but he's not alone in setting the tone; other top-tier BJP leaders are also walking in his footsteps. Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah's remarks linking voting for the Congress party to "jihad" in the South Indian state of Telangana have also stirred controversy.

Read More: The Modi-fication of India Is Almost Complete

The India Hate Lab, a Washington D.C.-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, in its report of 2023 paints a grim picture of rising hate speech incidents against Muslims, totaling 668 documented cases. 

These incidents, often featuring calls for violence and spreading divisive theories, were predominantly concentrated in regions governed by the BJP, particularly during key election periods like in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh. Additionally, the report highlighted stark differences in hate speech content between BJP and non-BJP-governed areas, with BJP leaders more frequently involved in non-BJP territories as they strive to expand political footholds.

When leaders resort to fear-mongering, it legitimizes the dehumanization of minorities, creating a fertile ground for extremists. This often isn’t just about one app or incident. It’s about the pervasive atmosphere of intolerance that such rhetoric by the BJP leaders breeds. And those who oppose this type of hate speech want to ensure that no one—regardless of their faith, gender, or caste—has to live in fear of being targeted for who they are. 

Modi’s statement received widespread criticism from the opposition, the intelligentsia community including authors, writers, scholars, academics, and the minority Muslim population of India. The Congress party even filed a complaint with the Election Commission, alleging that Modi's remarks violate electoral laws that prohibit appeals to religious sentiments. Despite public outcry and demands from activists and citizens for action, the Election Commission has so far taken no appropriate action. 

Modi's Islamophobic statements, which have fueled fears over and over again among India's Muslim population, must be viewed within the broader context of his party's strategies—which often invoke religious and communal sentiments to galvanize their voter base. And this time, the aim is to break all previous records by securing 400 plus seats in the 543 seat parliament.

If the BJP is able to secure such a huge majority in the parliament, Hindu majoritarianism will remain unchecked. The hostility towards the minorities could escalate even more, and opposition parties may bear the brunt of state agencies and crackdowns if they ask questions. 

During Modi’s previous terms, Muslims have seen an increased marginalization and discrimination fueled by Hindu nationalist agendas—ranging from difficulty in securing a rented accommodation in urban cities, erasure of Muslim names from roads, cities and railway stations, to the underrepresentation in government jobs and discrimination and vandalism of shops of small Muslim vendors. 

Today, India, a country which once took pride in its ganga-jamuni tehzeeb —a term used to refer to the fusion of Hindu-Muslim cultures—has become a global epicenter of divisive politics. While elections will come and go, the impact of the irresponsible words of Modi and the BJP will stay with the 200 million plus Muslims in the country.

These words have real and dangerous implications for the safety and security of India's Muslim population. Muslims in India currently face increased social ostracism, economic boycotts, and even physical violence. And another victory with an overwhelming majority will only mean more trouble.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• How Selena Gomez Is Revolutionizing the Celebrity Beauty Business
• TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2024
• Javier Milei’s Radical Plan to Transform Argentina
• How Private Donors Shape Birth-Control Choices
• The Deadly Digital Frontiers at the Border
• What's the Best Measure of Fitness? 
• The 31 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2024
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

Donald Trump found guilty in historic New York hush money case

A New York jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — the first time a former U.S. president has been convicted of a crime.

The jury reached its verdict in the historic case after 9½ hours of deliberations, which began Wednesday. 

He'll be sentenced on July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention. He faces penalties from a fine to four years in prison on each count, although it's expected he would be sentenced for the offenses concurrently, not consecutively.

Follow live updates here.

"This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump fumed to reporters afterward.

The verdict was read in the Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial since April 15. He had pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump looked down with his eyes narrowed as the jury foreperson read the word "guilty" to each count.

The judge thanked the jurors for their service in the weekslong trial. “You gave this matter the attention it deserved, and I want to thank you for that,” Judge Juan Merchan told them. Trump appeared to be scowling at the jurors as they walked by him on their way out of the courtroom.

Trump's attorney Todd Blanche made a motion for acquittal after the jury left the room, which the judge denied.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would not comment on what type of sentence he might seek, saying his office would do its talking in court papers.

"While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes to the courtroom doors — by following the facts and the law in doing so, without fear or favor," Bragg said. Asked for his reaction to the verdict, Bragg, who was inundated with threats from Trump supporters during the probe, said, "I did my job. We did our job."

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, immediately set out fundraising off the news, posting on his website that he's "a political prisoner" and urging his followers to give money.

Legal experts have told NBC News that even if Trump is sentenced to time behind bars, he'd most likely be allowed to remain out of jail while he appeals the verdict, a process that could take months or more. That means the sentence would most likely not interfere with his ability to accept the Republican nomination for president at the July convention.

And it likely wouldn't impact his ability to be elected. "There are no other qualifications other than those in the Constitution,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News & MSNBC Legal Analyst said following Thursday’s verdict.

President Joe Biden's campaign praised the verdict in a statement but stressed that Trump needs to be defeated in November.

“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law," said the campaign's communications director, Michael Tyler, but the "verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box."

In his closing argument this week, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that “the law is the law, and it applies to everyone equally. There is no special standard for this defendant.”

“You, the jury, have the ability to hold the defendant accountable,” Steinglass said.

Trump had maintained that the DA’s office had no case and that there had been no crime. “President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes,” Blanche said in his closing statement, arguing the payments to Cohen were legitimate.

Prosecutors said the disguised payment to Cohen was part of a “planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way.”

“It was election fraud. Pure and simple,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said in his opening statement.

While Trump wasn’t charged with conspiracy, prosecutors argued he caused the records to be falsified because he was trying to cover up a violation of state election law — and falsifying business records with the intent to cover another crime raises the offense from a misdemeanor to a felony. 

Trump was convicted after a sensational weekslong trial that included combative testimony from Cohen, Trump’s self-described former fixer, and Daniels, who testified that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 after she met him at a celebrity golf tournament. Trump has denied her claim, and his attorney had suggested that Cohen acted on his own because he thought it would make “the boss” happy.

Other witnesses included former White House staffers, among them adviser Hope Hicks, former Trump Organization executives and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.  

Trump didn’t take the witness stand to offer his own account of what happened, even though he proclaimed before the trial began that he would “absolutely” testify. The defense’s main witness was Robert Costello, a lawyer whom Cohen considered retaining in 2018. Costello, who testified that Cohen had told him Trump had nothing to do with the Daniels’ payment, enraged Merchan by making disrespectful comments and faces on the stand. At one point, the judge cleared the courtroom during Costello’s testimony and threatened to hold him in contempt. 

Cohen testified that he lied to Costello because he didn’t trust him and that he’d lied to others about Trump’s involvement at the time because he wanted to protect his former boss.

Cohen was the lone witness to testify to Trump’s direct involvement in the $130,000 payment and the subsequent reimbursement plan. Blanche spent days challenging his credibility, getting Cohen to acknowledge he has a history of lying, including under oath.

Cohen said he was paid the Daniels cash in a series of payments from Trump throughout 2017 that the Trump Organization characterized as payments pursuant to a retainer agreement “for legal services rendered.”

Prosecutors said there was no such agreement, and Cohen’s version of events was supported by documentary evidence and witness testimony. 

Blanche contended that the series of checks then-President Trump paid Cohen in 2017 “was not a payback to Mr. Cohen for the money that he gave to Ms. Daniels” and that he was being paid for his legal work as Trump’s personal lawyer.

Testimony from Jeff McConney, a former senior vice president at Trump’s company, challenged that position. McConney said the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, told him that Cohen was being reimbursed for a $130,000 payment, and prosecutors entered Weisselberg’s handwritten notes about the payment formula as evidence. Cohen said Trump agreed to the arrangement in a meeting with him and Weisselberg just days before he was inaugurated as the 45th president.

Weisselberg didn't testify. He’s in jail on a perjury charge related to his testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case against Trump and his company. Cohen, McConney and other witnesses said Weisselberg, who spent decades working for Trump, always sought his approval for large expenditures. 

In all, the prosecution called 20 witnesses, while the defense called two.

Trump had frequently claimed, falsely, that the charges against him were a political concoction orchestrated by Biden to keep him off the campaign trail. But Trump eventually managed to bring the campaign to the courtroom, hosting top Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Sens. JD Vance of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, as his guests in court. Trump also used court breaks to tout political messages to his supporters, while his surrogates sidestepped Merchan’s gag order by attacking witnesses, individual prosecutors and Merchan’s daughter.

Merchan fined Trump $10,000 during the trial for violating his order, including attacks on Cohen and Daniels, and warned he could have him locked up if he continued violating the order.

Cohen celebrated the verdict in a post on X. "Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law. While it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters," Cohen wrote.

Trump was indicted in March of last year after a yearslong investigation by Bragg and his predecessor, Cyrus Vance. The charges were the first ever brought against a former president, although Trump has since been charged and pleaded not guilty in three other cases. None of the three — a federal election interference case in Washington, D.C., a state election interference case in Georgia and a federal case alleging he mishandled classified documents and national security information — appear likely to go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Adam Reiss is a reporter and producer for NBC and MSNBC.

Gary Grumbach produces and reports for NBC News, based in Washington, D.C.

Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Jillian Frankel is a 2024 NBC News campaign embed.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of lawyer in English

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

• She's hired a lawyer who specializes in divorce cases .
• Our lawyer thinks that we have a very good case .
• Millions of dollars were spent on lawyers in a courtroom showdown between the two companies .
• The report notes that 40 percent of lawyers entering the profession are women.
• If you're unsure of your legal rights , I would check with a lawyer.
• articled clerk
• attorney general
• draftswoman
• I rest my case idiom
• probation officer
• procurator fiscal
• prosecution
• superlawyer
• take silk idiom

lawyer | American Dictionary

Lawyer | business english, examples of lawyer, collocations with lawyer.

These are words often used in combination with lawyer .

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

Translations of lawyer

Get a quick, free translation!

Word of the Day

on top of the world

extremely happy

Keeping up appearances (Talking about how things seem)

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• English    Noun
• American    Noun
• Business    Noun
• Collocations
• Translations
• All translations

To add lawyer to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add lawyer to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Will Roy Cohn Save Donald Trump’s Hide One Last Time?

By Kai Bird

Mr. Bird is the director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography. He is working on a biography of Roy Cohn.

Sitting still for hours on end in a chilly, drab courtroom, unable to speak his mind, forced to listen to people say objectionable things about him, Donald Trump at a defense table in Manhattan’s Criminal Court may seem as far from his usual domain — the cheering crowds and the trappings of wealth — as could be imagined.

But it was in another courthouse just down the street that Mr. Trump’s wily mentor, Roy Cohn, pulled off one of his greatest legal feats. It was Mr. Cohn who taught Mr. Trump how to manipulate the law, and other people, to his advantage. His ghost now hovers over the former president’s entire legal outlook, influencing proceedings in ways large and small. The outcome in this case may be the final verdict on Mr. Cohn’s brilliant, sinister strategies.

Mr. Trump always admired Mr. Cohn’s bravado and belligerence; Mr. Cohn’s whole worldview seemed to validate the young developer’s crassest instincts. “If you need somebody to get vicious,” Mr. Trump once said, “hire Roy Cohn.” His legal strategy boiled down to: Delay and deny. Don’t hesitate to attack the judge and prosecutor (“I don’t care what the law is; tell me who the judge is” was his most famous line). Address the press every chance you get. And intimidate and ridicule witnesses.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have aggressively sought every delay possible and called for mistrials or new judges on a regular basis. Of the four criminal proceedings Mr. Trump faces, the one wrapping up now is probably the only case that will be heard before Election Day — and if Mr. Trump wins a second term, all bets are off. He attacked Justice Juan Merchan and witnesses so many times that he has been placed under gag orders — and then fined, when he repeatedly failed to honor them. And as for litigating a case through the media, Mr. Trump went Mr. Cohn one better: He founded his own social media organization, Truth Social, and litigates his cases there.

In the Manhattan case, the defense attorney Todd Blanche went for the jugular when cross-examining Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, shouting , “The jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened!” and invoking a disparaging remark that Mr. Cohen had made — about Mr. Blanche himself — with such fidelity that Justice Merchan rebuked him for his profanity. Later, the attorney Susan Necheles sought to shame Stormy Daniels, a porn star, accusing her of “selling” herself and having “a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real.”

Most recently we learned that the former president would not be taking the witness stand and exposing himself to cross-examination, choosing instead to let a stream of prominent Republicans visitors make his case for him on the courthouse steps. That is the strategy that Mr. Cohn lived by.

Roy Cohn was indicted four times by Manhattan’s legendary prosecutor Robert Morgenthau. “I said to him, ‘Roy, just tell me one thing,’” Mr. Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal.” “‘Did you really do all that stuff?’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘What the hell do you think?’ he said. I never really knew.” The most notorious of these cases involved charges of conspiracy, extortion, blackmail and bribing a former city appraiser inside the Foley Square courthouse. The trial dragged on for 11 weeks.

Mr. Cohn filed a formal affidavit of prejudice against the judge, asking him to recuse himself from the case. Mr. Cohn also claimed that the indictment should be dismissed because it was the result of a “personal vendetta” against him by Mr. Morgenthau. Both motions were denied, but they served to delay the prosecution’s case.

On Dec. 8, 1969, the last day of the proceedings, Mr. Cohn’s lawyer, Joseph Brill, was about to make his summation when he complained of chest pains and was rushed to a hospital. The court adjourned, not knowing what would happen next.

The following afternoon, Mr. Cohn, dressed in a monogrammed shirt and a dark-blue suit with thin stripes, astonished the judge and prosecutors by announcing that he was prepared to make his own summation.

It was an ingenious strategy that in effect allowed him to testify on his own behalf — which he had avoided doing — without having to submit to a cross-examination.

He spoke, brilliantly and without notes, for an hour that day, then for an extraordinary seven hours the next day. Peter King, who would go on to serve as a member of New York’s congressional delegation, was there as a young lawyer in Mr. Cohn’s firm. “It was effective, low-key,” he told me last week. “It was emotional, but in a quiet way. No histrionics. He was like the ultimate perfect summation.” By the end, one female juror was weeping , overcome with emotion.

It took the jury a mere four hours to declare him not guilty. Mr. Cohn turned to the assembled reporters and said simply, “God bless America.”

Mr. Trump has found his own ways to communicate to the jury without submitting to cross-examination, closing his eyes to shut out testimony he cannot abide and even audibly cursing at one point while Stormy Daniels was on the stand.

Of all the lessons Mr. Trump learned from his mentor, the value of treating people transactionally may have been the most important. The former president has run through countless lawyers in his decades of legal proceedings. Many were discarded. Some were not paid. But he held Mr. Cohn in high regard and took his lessons to heart. In 1981, he gave his mentor a pair of huge diamond cuff links as a gesture of profound gratitude. Years later, a friend of Mr. Cohn’s had them appraised. They were worthless fakes.

Kai Bird is the director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography and a co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” He is working on a biography of Roy Cohn.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Trump called ‘Apprentice’ contestant a racist slur, former producer says

Bill Pruitt, who served as a producer on the reality show, said in an online essay that Trump used the slur when discussing who would win the show’s first season. “‘Yeah,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘but, I mean, would America buy a [n-word] winning?’” Pruitt wrote.

Former president Donald Trump used a racist slur while discussing a contestant on “The Apprentice” during a recorded conversation two decades ago, a former producer for the show wrote in a new essay .

The producer, Bill Pruitt, said Trump made the comment while deciding between a Black finalist, Kwame Jackson, and a White finalist, Bill Rancic, in the finale of the show’s first season, which aired in 2004. As Trump adviser Carolyn Kepcher, who served as a judge on the show, began advocating for Jackson, Trump winced multiple times and questioned Jackson’s performance on the show, Pruitt wrote.

“I mean, would America buy a [n-word] winning?” Trump asked, according to Pruitt in his essay that Slate published Thursday.

Trump ultimately picked Rancic and awarded him a job at the Trump Organization. The reality competition series ran for 15 seasons, helping make Trump a household name before his first presidential campaign in 2016. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024, again running against President Biden after losing to him in 2020.

Trump’s campaign said Pruitt’s account was a “completely fabricated … story that was already peddled in 2016.”

“Nobody took it seriously then, and they won’t now, because it’s fake news,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Post. “Now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election and Black voters are rejecting their policies, they are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate.”

Trump has a long history of espousing antagonistic views toward African Americans. He declined to apologize in 2019 for taking out ads in 1989 that targeted the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino men who were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in New York City. And Trump gained political notoriety during Barack Obama’s presidency by embracing the false claim that Obama — the nation’s first Black president — was ineligible to be president because he was not a natural-born citizen.

During the first year of his presidency, Trump drew widespread condemnation when he said there were “ very fine people on both sides ” of a 2017 white nationalist and supremacist rally in Charlottesville that turned violent.

Despite his history, Trump has been making increasing appeals to Black voters in his race against Biden, including during a South Bronx rally last week .

Pruitt, one of four producers who worked on the show in its first two seasons, said he was bound by an “expansive nondisclosure agreement” that expired this year. He would have faced a $5 million fine or possibly jail time if he violated the agreement, he said.

Pruitt said the conversation was recorded as part of the show’s efforts to ensure such off-air deliberations did not run afoul of federal regulations for game shows.

Jackson, the contestant Pruitt says Trump described using the slur, said in a 2016 interview with Salon that at the time he was on the show, he did not think race played a role in his loss to Rancic. But Jackson said he later came to believe race factored into the outcome.

Jackson spoke out against Trump’s 2016 candidacy in the interview , saying he has “no interest in supporting someone who I think is, at his core, racist.”

The essay also described multiple instances in which Trump made sexist remarks about the appearance of women working on the show. Trump once told a female camera operator to get off an elevator because she was “too heavy,” Pruitt recalled. Trump also told other people on the set that another female camera operator was a “beautiful woman” who is “all I want to look at,” according to the former producer.

There has been intrigue for years surrounding possible unreleased tapes from “The Apprentice,” especially after the 2016 campaign. Weeks before that election, a recording surfaced from a 2005 hot-mic conversation with “Access Hollywood” co-anchor Billy Bush in which Trump boasted about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women.

The creator of “The Apprentice,” celebrity producer Mark Burnett, said at the time that he “does not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from ‘The Apprentice.’ ”

Trump said in a 2018 social media post that Burnett told him there were “NO TAPES of the Apprentice” where he used the same racist slur that Pruitt attributed to him. Trump called it a “terrible and disgusting word.” At the time, Trump was responding to claims by former White House aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman — once a contestant on the show — that there was a tape of him using the slur during the show’s filming.

Efforts to reach Burnett for comment Thursday through multiple publicly listed points of contact were unsuccessful.

Pruitt’s account comes as Biden is working to shore up his support among Black voters against Trump in their November election rematch. Biden and Vice President Harris, who is Black, visited Philadelphia on Wednesday to launch an initiative called “Black Voters for Biden-Harris.”

Responding to Pruitt’s essay, Biden’s campaign said it was more proof that Trump is a “textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president.”

“No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man,” Biden campaign spokesperson Jasmine Harris said in a statement. “Anyone notice a pattern?”

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running?: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

Presidential debates: Biden and Trump agreed to a June 27 debate on CNN and a Sept. 10 debate broadcast by ABC News.

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.

• My View My View
• Following Following
• Saved Saved

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference, the day after a guilty verdict in his criminal trial over charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., May 31, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Trump Conviction: a new post-trial poll, Biden slams attacks on the jury, and Trump looks to election

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

Thomson Reuters

Live Page editor. A text and video journalist based in London, Stephen is a former Reuters bureau chief in Jerusalem. He was previously a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and The Times of London. He reported from the Balkans, Iraq, India, Afghanistan, New York and the UK. He is co-author of the book 'Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement’.

Kylie works on the UK Breaking News team, reporting on key developments in political, economic and general news. Previously she was based in Westminster as a UK political correspondent for eight years, a period which included the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit and several general elections. She joined Reuters as a graduate trainee in 2008 and has also covered investment banking.

Editor on Reuters global desk with particular focus on energy, environment and resources. In more than two decades of experience at Reuters, worked in various bureaux, most recently spending five years in Brussels. Professional highlights include covering the Paris agreement on climate change. Also worked on national newspapers in Britain and Hong Kong and throughout her career has made time to cover the cultural sector.