Climate Change and Complicit Lawyers

Abstract This paper sets out to answer two questions: (1) Are lawyers complicit in their fossilfuel clients’ contributions to climate change and, if so, how blameworthy are they for this complicity?; (2) If lawyers are blameworthily complicit, how is the degree of blameworthiness impacted by their professional role? In order to answer the first question, this paper will mainly use Lepora and Goodin’s theory of moral complicity, but propose an alternative to their “shared purpose factor” (one of the factors that determine the blameworthiness for complicity), namely a quality of will approach: the blameworthiness of a lawyer’s complicity is greatest when she acts from ill will, whether her motives mirror those of the principal or not; it is decreased (but remains!) when she acts ‘merely’ from a deficiency of good will. In order to answer the second question, an important factor must be added to Lepora and Goodin’s method of assessing blameworthiness for complicity, namely the capacity in which one acts, that is, one’s (professional) role. Given the fact that appeals to role are a common way to (attempt to) deflect charges of complicity, this is a crucial addition. With these two adjustments in place, we can determine lawyers’ complicity and assess its blameworthiness. This article breaks with the scholarly and professional consensus by arguing that lawyers are complicit in their fossil fuel clients’ contributions to climate change, that their complicity is very blameworthy (at first glance), but that their professional role mitigates this blameworthiness, though it does not remove it entirely.