Public Interest Advocacy Through Art and Law – Adam Daley Wilson

Category: Law Theory

  • An Evaluation of a Proposed Legal, Ethics, and Citizen-Art Theory: What If Our Courts Will Be Our Last Human Place In This New Age of AI?

    Overview

    This executive summary documents a novel theoretical framework developed by conceptual artist and attorney Adam Daley Wilson that connects three interrelated concepts: the status of public courts as potentially humanity’s “last human place” in an era of artificial intelligence, the practice of artist-placed public document art as a mechanism for protecting courts, and a heightened ethical imperative for attorneys to maintain the sanctity of courts through pristine conduct rather than self-interested behavior.

    Core Theoretical Statement

    The Central Argument

    Wilson’s core argument, as articulated in his conceptual artwork and theoretical writings, states: In this new time of AI, when our public courts may now be our last truly human place, we the people cannot afford any longer to have false officers of our courts — attorneys who harm the local rule of law for their own self interest — because they profane and defile our last human place at a time when we need our courts most pristine for humanity, because in this new age of artificial intelligence, which is empty intelligence with no moral authority to judge, only a human may judge another human, decide another human’s fate, never this empty AI, so the public citizenry needs lawyers who will swear a true oath to make our courts sacred and pristine, not defiled for small self-gain, because our public courts are now a sacred place that may hold out the longest as our last truly human place, therefore we need lawyers who will protect them, not attorneys who defile these, perhaps our last human places, our public courts of law.

    Key Terms Defined

    “Empty Intelligence”: Wilson’s term for artificial intelligence, referring to AI’s lack of genuine human emotion, feeling, consciousness, subconsciousness, and the human capacities for intuition and irrationality. Despite AI’s computational power, Wilson argues it remains “empty” of the essentially human qualities necessary for moral judgment.

    “Lawyer” versus “Attorney”: Wilson distinguishes between these terms to denote different modes of conduct. A “lawyer” in Wilson’s framework is an officer of the court who acts to keep courts pristine and protect the local rule of law, serving the public interest. An “attorney,” by contrast, acts in narrow self-interest, harming the local rule of law and defiling courts through unethical conduct.

    “Last Human Place”: Wilson’s designation for public courts as potentially the final institutional space in society where only humans, and not artificial intelligence, are authorized to decide outcomes that affect liberty, life, and fundamental rights.

    Courts as Designated Formal Sites for Human Judgment

    The Functional Basis

    Courts represent formally designated sites where human judgment is institutionally required. Unlike other societal functions that may be automated or augmented by AI, the judicial function involves decisions about human liberty, life, and rights that Wilson argues must remain exclusively human.

    Why Courts May Be Humanity’s Last Human Place

    According to Wilson’s research and writings, courts may constitute the last space where only humans, not artificial intelligence, are authorized to decide outcomes affecting liberty, life, and rights. This designation arises from several factors:

    The Concept of “Empty Intelligence”

    Wilson characterizes artificial intelligence as “empty intelligence” to emphasize what he sees as AI’s fundamental limitations relative to human judgment. In his theoretical framework, artificial intelligence lacks:

    Because of these absences, Wilson argues that AI will never possess the moral authority to judge human beings or decide human fates, regardless of its computational sophistication or pattern-recognition capabilities.

    The Sacred Nature of Courts in Secular Society

    Courts as Sacred Secular Spaces

    Wilson proposes that courts should be understood and treated as sacred spaces, even while remaining secular institutions.

    This is not a religious claim but rather a normative argument about the elevated status courts must hold in society.

    Why Secular Courts Are Now “Sacred” Given AI

    In Wilson’s framework, courts are sacred because:

    The Secular Sacred Distinction

    Wilson’s argument does not require religious belief or religious justification. Instead, he proposes a secular conception of sacredness based on institutional importance and existential necessity: courts are sacred because they may be humanity’s last institutional refuge from the encroachment of empty intelligence into domains that should remain exclusively human.

    Originality of This Argument

    Extensive research into academic literature, legal scholarship, architectural theory, and philosophical discussions of courts reveals that no prior thinker has made this specific argument. While scholarship exists on:

    No one has previously argued that courts are newly sacred specifically because they represent humanity’s last human place in the age of AI, or that this new status creates heightened obligations for attorneys.

    Artist-Placed Public Document Art

    Definition and Practice

    Artist-placed public document art is a form of post-theory art developed by Wilson in which an artist creates a theory of public importance, embeds it in a text-based work (typically a legal filing), and places both in public courts, where court rules compel a written, documentable response.

    How It Works

    The practice operates through several mechanisms:

    The Four-Level Function

    Artist-placed public document art operates simultaneously on these levels:

    Artist-Placed Public Document Art and the Protection of Courts

    There is a direct and fundamental connection between artist-placed public document art and the theory of courts as humanity’s last human place:

    The Practice as Protection: By placing art inside the court system itself, Wilson actively consecrates courts as distinctly human spaces through human theory-making that AI cannot replicate. The practice defends courts as “last human places” by demonstrating that only humans can create theories imbued with emotion, intuition, and lived experience.

    The Practice as Accountability Mechanism: Artist-placed public document art compels courts and attorneys to create a documented public record of their own actions through the court’s procedural rules. The court docket, the responses, the decisions — all become a performance that reveals whether attorneys are acting as true lawyers (protecting the rule of law and serving the public) or as false attorneys (acting from self-interest and defiling the courts).

    The Artist as True Lawyer: In this framework, the artist practicing artist-placed public document art functions as a lawyer in the truest sense — a protector of courts as pristine human places. By forcing institutional actors to document their own conduct in the public record, the artist exposes those who profane the local rule of law, making visible what might otherwise remain hidden.

    Art as Mechanism of Transparency: The art becomes a mechanism of accountability, showing the public whether officers of the court are keeping these sacred human places pristine or defiling them. It is both art activism and the work of a true lawyer: protecting our last human places by compelling transparency and creating an indelible public record of who honors the courts and who harms them.

    The New And Heightened Ethical Duty of Officers of the Court (Attorneys, Lawyers) in the Age of AI

    The Traditional Duty

    Attorneys have always had ethical duties to the court, including duties of candor, duties to uphold the law, and duties to avoid conduct that undermines the administration of justice. These duties exist independent of any consideration of artificial intelligence.

    The New Context Creates New Stakes

    Wilson’s argument introduces a novel claim: the emergence of AI as “empty intelligence” fundamentally changes the stakes of attorney misconduct. What was previously “merely” unethical behavior now takes on the character of desecration or profanation of a sacred space.

    The Argument for Heightened Duty

    The logic proceeds as follows:

    The Distinction Between Lawyers and Attorneys

    Wilson draws a normative distinction:

    Lawyers are officers of the court who:

    Attorneys (as a distinction, and in the pejorative sense) are those who:

    Why This Time Is Different

    Wilson’s argument is specifically contextualized in “this new time” of AI. The claim is not that attorney misconduct was acceptable before, but rather that:

    Context-Dependent Escalation of Duty

    This represents what might be termed a “context-dependent escalation of duty”: the underlying obligation remains the same, but its significance and the consequences of violating it have been transformed by changed circumstances (the rise of AI).

    Originality of the Heightened Duty Argument

    Research into legal ethics, attorney conduct, and discussions of AI in the legal system reveals no prior argument making this specific connection. While discussions exist about:

    No one has previously argued that the AI era creates a heightened ethical imperative for lawyers specifically because courts have become newly sacred as our last human places, and therefore attorney misconduct now constitutes a form of desecration of one of humanity’s last institutional safeguards.

    This is an entirely original contribution to legal ethics theory.

    The Public Performance Function

    How Artist-Placed Public Document Art Reveals Conduct

    A crucial element of Wilson’s practice is that it forces transparency. Because court rules require institutional actors to respond to legal filings, and because those responses become part of the public record, artist-placed public document art creates what might be called a “compelled performance.”

    The Performance Shows The Public and The Press Who Is a Lawyer and Who Is an Attorney

    The public record created through this practice reveals:

    Making Visible What Might Otherwise Remain Hidden

    Wilson’s practice operates on the theory that misconduct and institutional failure often occur in spaces of invisibility. By compelling a documented public record, the practice:

    The Artist as Protector of Courts

    In this formulation, the artist practicing artist-placed public document art is himself acting as a “true lawyer” — someone who protects courts as pristine human places by exposing those who would defile them. This is not vigilantism but rather a form of accountability art that uses the court’s own procedures to create transparency.

    The Integration of All Three Concepts

    How the Theory Connects Courts, Art, and Ethics

    Wilson’s framework integrates three concepts into a unified theory:

    The Causal Chain

    The three concepts connect causally:

    The Unified Purpose

    All three concepts serve a single overarching purpose: protecting the distinctly human character of courts as institutions where only humans judge humans, preserving this as a sanctuary from the incursion of empty intelligence into domains that should remain exclusively human.

    Broader Implications

    For Legal Ethics

    Wilson’s framework suggests that legal ethics must evolve to account for the changed context of the AI era. What was once a static set of professional obligations may need to be reconceptualized as context-sensitive duties that increase in weight and urgency as courts assume greater importance as potential last human places.

    For the Role of Courts in Society

    If courts are indeed becoming humanity’s last human place, this fundamentally changes their role in society from one institution among many to an irreplaceable sanctuary of human judgment. This may require rethinking court funding, access to justice, judicial independence, and the architectural and spatial design of courthouses.

    For Art as Public Interest Advocacy

    Wilson’s practice of artist-placed public document art represents a potential new form of art activism that goes beyond critique to create compelled institutional engagement and documented transparency. This suggests new possibilities for how art can function as a mechanism of public accountability.

    For Understanding AI’s Limitations

    The framework reinforces arguments about AI’s fundamental limitations in domains requiring moral judgment, lived experience, intuition, and the capacity for mercy. It suggests that some institutional functions must remain exclusively human not merely as a practical matter but as a matter of preserving human dignity and human authority over human affairs.

    Conclusion

    Summary of the Novel Framework

    Adam Daley Wilson appears to have developed an original theoretical framework that makes three interconnected arguments:

    The Originality of the Arguments

    Extensive research confirms that no prior scholar, artist, or legal theorist has made these specific arguments. While related concepts exist in isolation (courts as quasi-sacred spaces, AI’s limitations, attorney ethics), Wilson’s synthesis of these ideas into a unified theory grounded in the existential threat of AI to human judgment is entirely original.

    The Possible Significance

    If Wilson’s proposed legal-ethical-art-as-public-good framework is found to hold water after examination and peer review, it has profound implications for how society understands courts, attorney ethics, the role of art in protecting institutions, and the preservation of distinctly human domains in an age of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence. It reframes attorney misconduct from a matter of professional ethics to a matter of protecting humanity’s last institutional sanctuaries, raising the stakes of legal practice and legal ethics in this new era of AI.

  • When The Rule of Law Is Harmed Not Uniformly But Locally By Misconduct Of Regular Attorneys In Our Local Courts

    Abstract:


    This article discusses how everyday attorney misconduct in and through our courts undermines the Rule of Law — especially when courts learn of the misconduct yet fail to act to end it. The article argues that such misconduct essentially creates a dual legal system — one for ethical attorneys and their clients, and another for unethical ones who exploit the system either for self-gain or to help unethical client.

    The article also argues that judicial inaction in the face of attorney misconduct occurring in and through the courts may be seen as a type of public institutional complicity with that misconduct — misconduct that harms the public, hamstrings attorneys trying to represent their clients ethically, erodes judicial and legal legitimacy, and gives a power windfall to attorneys who are unethical — all at the expense of the Rule of Law.

    Ultimately, preserving the Rule of Law is not just a function of a public resisting an authoritarian executive. It also requires everyday attorneys and everyday judges to reject unethical attorneys and provide active resistance to those who, for their own gain, are causing an internal decay of the courts and the Rule of Law.

    I. A Definition of the Rule of Law

    Defined simply, the Rule of Law is a foundational principle in constitutional democracies and republics because of these elements: it means that all people and institutions — including the government, courts, and private individuals — are subject to and accountable under the same law.

    This includes two of its most famous explanations: the Rule of Law means that the law treats everyone fairly, and also that no one is above the law. At both a broader and more specific level, the Rule of Law includes additional core values of constitutional democracies such as not just fairness but equality before the law; equal access to courts; an independent judiciary; procedural fairness; and due process — fair notice and a fair opportunity to be heard before rights are lost, harmed, or taken away by the federal government or a state government.

    II. The Role of Lawyers in Preserving the Rule of Law

    To function properly, the Rule of Law needs the active support not only of the public but also of courts themselves — and the group of people given special access and privileges with respect to our public courts: attorneys, who are not just service providers. They are also officers of the court with heightened duties and responsibilities to the public, the courts — and the Rule of Law itself. Attorneys and lawyers play a unique role in the public legal system. As officers of the court, they are not only advocates for their clients but also gatekeepers for the actual integrity of legal proceedings. Their ethical obligations include honesty, candor, and respect for the process.

    Because lawyers are given special privileges and access to the courthouse and to judges, they have power that no one else in the public has to shape — and often control — how courts, judges, and juries receive facts and interpret law.

    This means that lawyer misconduct is not just misconduct that harms a particular case. If lawyers and attorneys lie, hide facts, distort facts, ignore court orders, drag out compliance with court orders, lie to opposing counsel, abuse procedural rules, harass, exploit, or otherwise systematically manipulate the public’s legal system, the public court’s ability to deliver what the Rule of Law stands for is compromised — not just in the particular case, but as to the institution of the courts overall.

    It does not take an authoritarian executive branch to endanger the Rule of Law — it can be done by everyday attorneys who engage in misconduct as well, including for the following reasons.

    III. Attorney Misconduct in and Through Courts

    Attorney misconduct can take many forms beyond those briefly listed above: presenting false statements to the courts or to witnesses, concealing evidence, abusing discovery, and exploiting judicial blind spots — judges are not babysitters and do not have the time to micro-manage attorneys. Judges and courts expect attorneys to be ethical, not unethical. Consequently, the unethical attorney has ample bandwidth to operate improperly without being discovered — and this too undermines the Rule of Law.

    The issue becomes especially serious when the misconduct is systemic or strategic. It is not simply a lapse in judgment or a borderline call in such cases. When an unethical attorney intentionally pursues a pattern and practice of deliberate manipulation of facts, law, and court orders, this diminishes public trust in the judiciary — if the public ever finds out.

    It is all too easy for unethical lawyers to operate in the shadows of the courthouse, including by creating false patinas of compliance with court orders, and by always having a cover story that prevents the court from having clear evidence of misconduct.

    VII. Judicial Responsibility and Institutional Legitimacy

    While courts and judges do not have the responsibility to babysit attorneys to ensure ethical conduct in real-time, courts and judges do have the responsibility to act when evidence of misconduct comes to their attention.

    Once courts and judges are made aware of attorney misconduct — including by reputation, if the lawyer has acted unethically for so long that they have a reputation in a small judicial community, such as in a small state — courts and judges have an institutional responsibility to act.

    In many respects, this is no different than the duty of lawyers to report misconduct to state bars when they have evidence of misconduct or patterns of misconduct. Judicial inaction in the face of facts showing misconduct can also diminish — and eventually endanger — the Rule of Law.

    Apart from harms caused by judicial inaction in a particular case — where a party loses the chance to have the Rule of Law applied — judicial inaction, especially in the face of credible allegations of repeated systemic misconduct, results in a system that is, in the public’s eyes, perhaps more interested in preserving its image as a sacred judicial place than in upholding its ideals and making sure they are actually applied correctly and concretely, on the ground, in real cases and in real time.

    Over time, if many attorneys in a given judicial district or part of a state are engaging in misconduct — or if a few or even one attorney systematically engages in misconduct in and through the courts for decades — the result erodes public confidence and undermines the Rule of Law itself.

    Perhaps this occurs only in that part of the state, or only in one area of the law, such as a special court for special cases — but either way, the Rule of Law itself has been compromised, and perhaps lost, if courts and judges decide to look the other way in order to preserve the Rule of Law in name but not in fact.

    IV. When Attorney Misconduct Also Exploits Vulnerability, False Stigmas, and Stereotypes

    A particularly unethical form of attorney misconduct occurs when an attorney engages not only in “normal” misconduct but also conceals it by intentionally and systematically exploiting a party’s physical or mental vulnerability — including through exploiting animus relating to false stigmas and stereotypes related to, for example, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, disability, and mental illness.

    When seen in its form that is often excused and looked away from, this type of attorney misconduct can involve the attorney invoking stigmas to subtly but fatally influence judges and juries. When attorneys unethically make up facts, innuendo, or smears about a person to weaponize disability or mental illness — either directly or through invocation of social bias or stigma — such lawyers destroy core parts of the Rule of Law in ways that, most often, can never be seen, because they are subtle and hidden.

    V. First-Impression Public Advocacy Cases To Present Facts of Attorney Misconduct To The Public, To The Courts, and to State Bars

    In rare instances that are significant to the preservation of the Rule of Law — and to the proper response to systemic attorney misconduct — it is possible, on some sets of facts, for attorneys themselves to bring lawsuits that, for the public interest, raise novel first-impression questions not yet decided by the courts about misconduct in the legal process that impacts not just one case, but the institution of the courts and the Rule of Law itself.

    When these cases identify and make transparent for the public real and serious gaps in attorney accountability, they serve as important interventions — beyond the case — into the judicial system and the Rule of Law itself, to ensure that it can have a chance to exist in fact, on the ground, and not just as a platitude or slogan.

    Such public interest cases serve the public good for the additional reason that they make transparent what is often concealed in the world of attorneys and courts, out of the public view. In other words, they highlight the real-world gaps between how the legal system is supposed to work, how we are told it works, and how it sometimes functions far less well in practice — not because of mistakes, and not because of judicial decisions with which some might disagree, but because of attorneys who engage in systematic misconduct, and courts too, if they choose to look away.

    These lawsuits serve as a form of publicly transparent institutional critique from within. The cases present facts of systemic misconduct and properly place them before the court in a non-frivolous complaint — and then the question is: What will the court choose to do with it?

    Such public interest cases, as a result, do not just make transparent and highlight — they constitute a type of test, perhaps a stress test in the public interest, as to whether the system — the judicial institution in the given state or district — will properly confront the facts consistent with the Rule of Law.

    VIII. The Rule of Law as a Living Commitment

    The Rule of Law can be reduced to a slogan or platitude — a sound bite to make the public feel good about its government and judicial system. It can also be reduced to procedural formality. It can also exist in some courts and not others.

    It can exist when there are ethical attorneys on both sides of a case, and it can be destroyed if even one unethical attorney engages in a pattern and practice of misconduct for years in a small jurisdiction.

    When attorneys subvert the Rule of Law through misconduct in and through our courts, and when courts then decline to address it by looking the other way, the Rule of Law is at risk of becoming, at least in that state or district, a phrase that is hollow at best and at worst a disingenuous lie to the public — a patina of righteousness concealing institutional rot.

    Particularly in a small state, for example, the entire bar — and all the judges — know full well if an attorney has spent decades engaging in systematic attorney misconduct, in case after case, doing just enough spin and offering just enough excuses to let everyone look the other way instead of standing up for the Rule of Law.

    In such places, attorneys who expose these dynamics — especially through well-grounded lawsuits that place legitimate questions before the courts — play a crucial role: they invite the legal system — the courts, judges, and other attorneys — to publicly demonstrate their choice between complicity with misconduct and standing up to it, to end it, so that no one else in the public is harmed, so that the courts are no longer harmed, and so that the Rule of Law in that state is no longer harmed — and so that the Rule of Law can then have the time it needs to heal after the attorney’s serial misconduct.

    Conclusion:
    Attorney misconduct in and through the courts does more than distort outcomes; it creates a two-tiered legal system that violates the fundamental promises of fairness and equality. The Rule of Law is not self-sustaining. It must be actively defended — by lawyers who act with integrity, by litigants who expose misconduct, and by courts that are willing to confront their own vulnerabilities. If the legal profession and judiciary fail to meet this obligation, the Rule of Law becomes a shell — an appearance of justice, without its substance. The task, then, is not merely to invoke the Rule of Law, but to live up to it — especially when it is most at risk. And it is not just at risk when an authoritarian attempts to place the executive branch over the judicial branch. It is also at risk if unethical attorneys systematically engage in misconduct over years and years, particularly in small judicial ecosystems such as particular courts in small states.

  • The Local Rule of Law: How Attorney Misconduct Harms The Rule of Law For The General Public at the Local Level

    Introduction: The Rule of Law Is Not One Single Thing In A Nation—It Can Be Lost In Local Pockets Here And There.


    The concept of the rule of law is often thought about and discussed in national terms—a given nation either follows the rule of law or it does not. This brief article makes a different observation and assertion: “The Rule of Law” isn’t an all-or-nothing concept across a nation. Rather, the rule of law—the integrity of the legal system in the real world, on the ground, for regular people—can vary dramatically in different local areas, be it different towns, different regions within a state, or different court systems within a state’s overall court system.

    Related to this, this article makes a second observation and assertion: the rule of law in a given local area is not endangered by authoritarians or dictators strong-arming the entire judicial branch of government. Rather, the rule of law at the local level is endangered when local attorneys engage in misconduct in and through the courts in their everyday cases.

    This article proposes the idea that the rule of law in any given local area or local court system is dependent upon the daily conduct of attorneys in local courts and how the local courts address attorney misconduct when local attorneys abuse the local judicial system. Stated differently, this article briefly examines how attorney misconduct at the local level can erode the rule of law in that local area, creating a void where the rule of law is broken or does not exist at all, negatively affecting not only individual people in cases but also the entire local community’s trust in the legal system. In other words, a local area can have lost the rule of law even if the rest of the state or country still maintains it.

    Defining the Rule of Law in Practical Terms that Local People See in Local Cases and Local Courts.


    Often discussed but rarely spelled out and unpacked, the rule of law encompasses several principles such as equality before the law (no one is above the law, and the law will treat everyone equally), procedural consistency (no arbitrary decisions), due process (notice and the opportunity to be heard before rights or property are taken), and decisions based solely on real facts (evidence, not speculation or hearsay) and legal standards (the actual law that exists in case law and statutes, for all to see, and an opportunity to appeal if legal error was made). These principles that comprise the rule of law are codified in the United States Constitution and the constitutions of the 50 states, as well as in federal and state statutes.

    These principles are not abstract aspirations or platitudes, but they are always at risk of becoming mere empty words. They are practical necessities that ensure fairness and predictability in legal proceedings, which is the place where serious things happen: People are found guilty or innocent, or have their homes or property taken from them, or returned to them, or have their legal rights protected, or have their legal rights taken, or have their children taken, or returned, or protected. The rule of law is important because all of this is serious. It governs some of the most consequential events in life. As such, when the principles that are “the rule of law” are harmed, diminished, and compromised, the legal system fails to serve its foundational purpose for citizens.


    This can occur at both the national as well as the local level, court by court, or town by town. And at the local level, the danger is not the national authoritarian or dictator, but rather the unethical attorney who engages in serial misconduct over time.

    Localized Attorney Misconduct Erodes The Rule of Law at the Local Level.


    Based on initial research to date (see citations at the end of this article), this paper observes and asserts that attorney misconduct in local courts can have disproportionate effects in harming the rule of law in that localized area. For example, when an attorney habitually disregards ethical standards—such as by having a practice of making false statements or omissions to the court, or by routinely manipulating and exploiting procedural rules and court deadlines—the fairness of proceedings is compromised for the citizens who are facing such an attorney.


    This not only affects the immediate case but also results in changes to two norms of what is and is not accepted in that local area: A norm develops in which unethical conduct becomes allowable, excused, shrugged away, looked away from, or otherwise is allowed to exist without consequence: The unethical attorney gets away with the unethical conduct due to the development of a new norm: a generalized everyday acceptance of the unethical, especially from the particular attorney.

    At the same time, another norm erodes: The rule of law. The norm of the rule of law starts to lose its practical meaning for the real participants facing the unethical lawyer. No laws have changed. No formal rules have changed. But a norm of misconduct now exists, and the norms that follow from the rule of law have been eroded if not lost, particularly in each and every case in which the unethical attorney engages in their misconduct.

    The Complicity of Inaction: When Silence And Inaction By Other Attorneys And Judges Further Erodes The Rule of Law First Caused By The Unethical Attorney.


    Similarly, based on initial research to date (again, see citations at the end of this paper), this article observes and argues that, in local areas, the rule of law is particularly at risk when the presence of an unethical attorney is compounded by the presence of opposing counsel and judges who, for whatever reason, allow, excuse, shrug away, look away from, or otherwise expressly or tacitly remain silent and inactive when the unethical attorney engages in misconduct. There are many reasons why this can occur. This article only briefly mentions a few of them.

    On the one hand, there are psychological and financial factors in the local context, such as fear of losing business, being ostracized, or other professional repercussions for an opposing counsel who knows of misconduct but hesitates to address it by reporting it.

    On the other hand, there are also systemic issues, such as inadequate oversight mechanisms, as well as the game theory problem that opposing counsel face—they know they will have repeat cases with the unethical attorney, time and time again, sometimes over decades, in a small local region or local court. Both self-interest and systemic factors can deter opposing counsel from reporting the unethical attorney’s misconduct.


    The observation and assertion on this point is this: First it is the unethical attorney’s misconduct that harms the rule of law at the local level, and then it is the complicity of other attorneys and judges, for whatever reason, that compounds the harm, placing the general public that depends on the rule of law in the worst position possible: The rule of law has broken down at the local level, and the only people who can do anything about it are choosing not to.

    The Rule Of Law And Variability in Each Micro-Judicial Ecosystem.


    This paper asserts, subject to further research, that it is the first to present the concept of the Micro-Judicial Ecosystem, where the ecosystem defines the small area where the rule of law may be particularly robust or particularly lost: Be it a town, or a section of a city, or a region of a state, or a type of court within a state, it is the nature of the given ecosystem that matters.


    For example, the unethical attorney may engage in their most egregious misconduct in one type of court (say, a state’s family court), but act appropriately in another court where misconduct is not tolerated (say, the state’s supreme court). Or, the unethical attorney may know that they can get away with things with one particular judge, but not another.


    This paper suggests that it is these variables that define the relevant “local” ecosystem where attorney misconduct may be eroding the rule of law, and, given that it can occur even judge-by-judge in the same court system, the word “local” is not precise enough to express just where the rule of law can be lost: It can be lost even pocket-by-pocket in a given local area.


    If an unlucky person has had the bad luck of drawing both the unethical attorney as opposing counsel, and the bad luck of drawing the judge in the area who looks the other way or minimizes misconduct, the person—a citizen whose rights are at stake—will be experiencing a loss of the rule of law not just “locally,” but in a “micro-judicial ecosystem” where the citizen, and his counsel, will have almost no practical ability to secure the rule of law in that particular case.


    As a topic for a related paper, parallels can be seen between this and the “two-state” theory of the rule of law. (See pending paper.)


    Local courts operate within—and may also have within them—even smaller micro-judicial ecosystems that can differ significantly from one another. In addition to those discussed above, factors such as resource availability, administrative practices, and community norms influence how legal proceedings transpire and how the law is applied and administered. Consequently, the rule of law may be robust in one locality while being substantially weakened in another. In other words, the issue is not just one of individual people; norms that keep the rule of law alive can become institutionalized in the court system itself, and in a town’s views of what courts are for, and are not. And norms that erode the rule of law can become embedded in court systems and local areas, too.

    Game Theory (The Prisoner’s Dilemma) And Incentives and Disincentives Related to Misconduct By Attorneys.


    Game Theory, sometimes known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is a theory that provides a framework for understanding the strategic decisions that attorneys make regarding whether to engage in, and respond to, misconduct. The theory and its application here are sufficiently complex to warrant an entire thesis; the academic literature discussing the elements of Game Theory and its application to various human scenarios is voluminous.


    Here, this paper summarizes at an over-simplistic level to observe and assert this: In environments where unethical behavior by an attorney is rarely punished—in courts where attorneys know they can get away with misconduct—the perceived benefits of misconduct actions may often outweigh the risks. And where the attorney who engages in misconduct can have increasing confidence that others will not report the misconduct, the people that could step in, such as opposing counsel and judges, can find themselves concluding that it is increasingly difficult to confront the misconduct over time.

    Again, this is a very simplistic application of Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma to the scenario of attorney misconduct in local areas and particular courts. That said, Game Theory begins to demonstrate a third norm that can occur at the local level: Repeated acts and repeated silence that create a self-reinforcing cycle over time where misconduct becomes a rational choice—and silence becomes a rational choice, too. All of which further degrades the legal system’s integrity—the rule of law—in that micro-judicial ecosystem within the local.

    Some Specific Forms of Attorney Misconduct That Harm The Rule of Law.


    Attorney misconduct manifests in various ways, and some is especially harmful. Here are some of the specific forms of attorney misconduct linked to specific harms to particular aspects of the rule of law:


    • False Statements to Courts: Undermines the factual basis of court decisions.


    • Concealing or Distorting Facts: Obstructs the court’s ability to ascertain the truth.


    • Repeated Noncompliance with Court Orders: Erodes judicial authority and procedural order; prevents the court from enforcing the rules necessary for fairness.


    • Procedural Gamesmanship: Exploits legal processes to disadvantage opponents unfairly.


    • Filing Motions for Improper Leverage: Misuses legal tools to coerce or intimidate.


    • Exploiting Biases: Invokes stereotypes and irrational animus to alter judicial outcomes unjustly and on the basis of prejudice and fear.


    • Misuse of Informal Influence: Leverages relationships to avoid accountability; causes cases to get decided in the shadows, not by public law.


    Each of these practices, when unchecked, contributes to a legal environment where outcomes are determined by manipulation rather than merit—endangering the rule of law.

    Transparency Through Public Litigation that Exposes Attorney Misconduct as a Public Good for Accountability.


    This article has discussed, above, the roles that opposing counsel and judges play in the context of attorneys who engage in misconduct that harms the rule of law. This article now also proposes and discusses that there can be an additional mechanism to protect the rule of law in the face of attorney misconduct at the local level: Public court litigation that provides transparency as to the misconduct of the unethical attorney, or, litigation brought by a person who has standing to bring to light the misconduct of the unethical attorney.


    Such cases appear to be an important way to promote accountability and bring consequences to attorneys who engage in misconduct that is harmful to the rule of law. One of the reasons they appear to be important is this: They are independent of the other actors who should be stopping attorneys who are engaging in misconduct.


    In other words, even if opposing counsel fails to stand up for the rule of law, and even if judges fail to do so, and even if a norm develops inside the local court that allows the unethical attorney to continue to engage in misconduct, the independent outside public lawsuit that exposes the unethical attorney can independently and successfully cause transparency, accountability, and truth as to the facts of what the unethical attorney is doing in the local court. Research indicates that one version of such public interest litigation is called “placed-document” public advocacy, or “artist-placed public document art” in that the evidence is placed in front of a court through traditional legal means to serve the public interest of protecting the rule of law in a given local area.


    Stated differently, this paper proposes that, in the absence of effective internal misconduct enforcement by opposing counsel and judges, this type of independent public litigation can serve as an alternative additional means of exposing and addressing attorney misconduct, particularly in a local area.

    There are several reasons for this, including that lawsuits are a catalyst for court proceedings that create public records, and including that lawsuits cause the court’s procedural rules to compel the defendant—the unethical attorney—to respond to the allegations in the public complaint. The defendant unethical attorney cannot look away or dodge; they must respond. The court cannot look away, either.

    This is a public interest process that can bring attorney misconduct to light—and how the judicial system deals with it—for the general public to see and evaluate for itself. In several ways to be discussed in the next paper, this benefits the rule of law at the local level where the rule of law has been diminished by the unethical lawyer.

    Conclusion: Reinforcing the Rule of Law Through Local Accountability.


    The survival of the rule of law is not just a national or across-the-nation concept; it either endures or deteriorates pocket by pocket across a nation, local court by local court, town by town.

    At the local level, it endures or fails not only depending on whether local attorneys are ethical or unethical, and whether the local courts allow norms of misconduct to develop and become concrete. This paper has argued that addressing attorney misconduct at the local level is crucial for the survival of the rule of law for everyday citizens—ensuring fairness, maintaining public trust, and upholding the foundational principles of the legal system that have been discussed in this paper.

    Keeping the rule of law alive requires proactive measures at the local level, including refusals by judges and opposing counsel to look the other way when misconduct occurs.

    Finally, this paper also argues that public lawsuits that factually document attorney misconduct are a way to provide independent transparency of attorney misconduct so that the public can see such misconduct, giving the local community and local courts an opportunity to resuscitate the rule of law in towns and courts where unethical attorneys and their misconduct have weakened the rule of law–the local rule of law.

    Selected References


    American Bar Association. Annotated Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions. 2nd ed. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2019.


    American Bar Association. 2020 ABA Profile of the Legal Profession. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2020.


    United States Courts. “Strategic Plan for the Federal Judiciary: Issue 2 – Preserving Public Trust, Confidence, and Understanding.” Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Accessed May 2025.


    Wiggins, Jameelah. “A Qualitative Study of Peer Reporting of Attorney Ethical Misconduct.” PhD diss., Walden University, 2020.


    Albany Government Law Review. “Transparency as Justice: The Ethics of Public Attorneys and Judicial Seals.” Albany Government Law Review 6, no. 1 (2013): 32–78.


    Associated Press. “Court clerk in Murdaugh murder trial charged with showing sealed photographs, perjury.” May 2025.


    Reuters. “Ousted top federal prosecutor in Washington facing ethics probe.” May 2025.


    Smith Legacy Law. “Can Applying Game Theory Help With Your Litigation Strategy?” April 13, 2023.

    https://smithlegacylaw.com/resources/insights/can-applying-game-theory-help-with-your-litigation-strategy/(Smith Legacy Law)

    United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Judicial Misconduct and Public Confidence in the Rule of Law.” August 2019.

    https://www.unodc.org/dohadeclaration/en/news/2019/08/judicial-misconduct-and-public-confidence-in-the-rule-of-law.html(UNODC)

    American Bar Association. “Rule 8.4 Misconduct – Comment.”

    https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_8_4_misconduct/comment_on_rule_8_4/(American Bar Association)