In his latest book, American Lawyers: Public Servants and the
Development of a Nation (ABA Publishing), Professor Paul
Carrington illustrates the role lawyers have played in the
development and preservation of democracy and social order in
America. In more than 200 short essays, Carrington chronicles
lawyers’ engagement in designing and developing American
democratic government and law from the nation’s founding to the
end of the 20th century. He also notes their missteps, from the
perpetuation, by some, of slavery to the American Bar
Association’s demand for “loyalty oaths” during the McCarthy
era, to Watergate. Carrington, who served as dean of Duke Law
School from 1979 to 1988, says the book had its genesis in that
period, when he oversaw the introduction of legal ethics into
the curriculum. “At times I had a feeling that what we were
talking about were lawyers who were right at the margin of doing
the wrong thing,” he says. “So I started teaching it as this
sort of history course, studying the careers of