Stein Center Publications, Prizes and Films

Publications and Prizes

The Stein Center collaborates with others to produce a wide variety of resources on legal ethics, access to justice, and other subjects.

Educational Films

The Stein Center has participated in the production of three educational films: Revitalizing the Lawyer-Poet: What Lawyers Can Learn from Rock and Roll; Red State, Blue State: Lawyers, Politics and Moral Counseling; and So Goes a Nation: Lawyers & Communities.

  • A film essay, Revitalizing the Lawyer Poet offers a new vision of the role and responsibilities of lawyers that rejects the dichotomy between altruistic lawyers and self-interested business people. It also challenges lawyers to develop a more compelling understanding of how they can fulfill their duty to the public good through their everyday work and how they can promote access to justice for low and middle income Americans by expanding the role of non-lawyers. Offered as a free resource for law school classes and continuing legal education programs, the film poses these questions: What is professionalism? What are the causes and consequences of the crisis of professionalism? Do lawyers have a public responsibility as intermediaries between the people and the law? Can lawyers make money, have fun, and do good, all at the same time?

    The film is inspired by the scholarship of Russell Pearce, the Edward & Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality, and Religion and a co-director of the Louis Stein Center for Law & Ethics at Fordham Law School. It is directed by Brian Danitz, Sundance Film Festival featured Director and Cinematographer of Academy and Emmy Award–winning films.

    For a free copy of the DVD, please email [email protected].

  • A film essay on ethics and professionalism, Red State, Blue State brings a fresh viewpoint to the ongoing debate about the role of morality in the practice of law. The film is offered as a free resource for law school classes and continuing legal education programs; it also is available as an online program that is accredited by the New York State CLE Board for experienced attorneys to earn one (1) non-transitional, ethics and professionalism credit hour.

    The film poses these questions:

    1. Should lawyers bring their personal morality into the counseling of clients?
    2. Why do most lawyers reject moral counseling in favor of amoral partisanship?
    3. Is our understanding of the lawyer’s role connected to a particular political philosophy?

    Featuring interviews with:

    • Doug Ammar
    • Robin Barnes
    • Erwin Chemerinsky
    • Lawrence Fox
    • Heather MacDonald
    • John McGinnis
    • Russell Pearce
    • Deborah Rhode
    • William Simon
    • Kenneth Starr
    • David Wilkins 

    The film is inspired by the scholarship of Russell Pearce, the Edward & Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality, and Religion and a co-director of the Louis Stein Center for Law & Ethics at Fordham Law School.

     

     

    Red State, Blue State: Lawyers, Politics and Moral Counseling

    Red State, Blue State: Lawyers, Politics & Moral Counseling from Fordham Law School on Vimeo.

    A film essay on ethics and professionalism, Red State, Blue State brings a fresh viewpoint to the ongoing debate about the role of morality in the practice of law.

  • So Goes a Nation: Lawyers and Communities is a documentary film depicting three approaches to working with people in low-income communities produced in 1998 by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the Stein Center for Law and Ethics, in conjunction with the Fordham Urban Law Journal and as part of the Stein Center’s annual symposium, "Lawyering for Poor Communities in the Twenty-First Century."

     

    Here is the manual that goes along with the film: Community Lawyering: Theory and Practice.