I would like to begin by thanking Philosophy & Law Committee members David Goldberg, Larry May, and Jim Nickel for contributing law review abstracts to this issue of the Newsletter, with a special thanks to Roger Shiner for contributing nearly half of those abstracts.

Topics and topic editors for the next three issues of the Newsletter are as follows:

Submission Deadline: closed
Editor: Carl Wellman
Department of Philosophy
Campus Box 1073
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
wellman@twinearth.wustl.edu

Details concerning this topic were set forth in the Fall, 1996 issue.

Submission Deadline: June 15, 1998
Editor: John Kleinig
241 Sixth Avenue, #10C
New York, NY 10014
jikjj@cunyvm.cuny.edu

To whom should lawyers be loyal? To themselves? To their clients? To the courts? To the general public? To more than one of these? In cases of conflict, which loyalty should take precedence? Much of the discussion of this issue has focused- for understandable reasonsCon the loyalty that lawyers should have to their clients, in particular their obligation to be zealous advocates for their clients' interests. This has been justified not only by reference to accused individuals' entitlement to have their rights defended, but also to the public value of a system in which individual rights are secured against the significant resources of state power. Yet many observers have been unhappy about the practical implications of such zealous advocacy: the apparently tunnel-vision promotion of client welfare at the expense of justice, victims, and seemliness. Such critics have argued accordingly for a constrained account of the loyalties of lawyers, properly understood.

Editor: William Edmundson
College of Law
Georgia State University
P.O. Box 4037
Atlanta, GA 30302-4037
wedmundson@gsu.edu

The question, "Why should I obey the law?" introduces a puzzle as old as antiquity. The puzzle (often referred to as "the problem of political obligation") is especially troublesome if we think of cases in which breaking the law is not otherwise wrongful, and in which the chances of getting caught are negligible. Philosophers from Socrates to H.L.A. Hart have struggled to give reasoned support to the thought that we do have a general moral duty to obey the law but, more recently, the greater number of learned voices has expressed doubt that there is any such duty, not even a prima facie one. Doubt here calls into question the nature of authority and the very possibility of a legitimate state. This issue will be devoted to the duty to obey the law, its nature, its existence, and its role in legal and political philosophy.

At present, the topic for the Spring, 1999 issue is undecided. If you are interested in submitting an article to be considered for inclusion in one of the forthcoming issues, it would be prudent to send an inquiry in advance, briefly describing your proposed topic. Space is very tight in the Newsletter, and there is room for only a few articles in each issue. Since the Newsletter aims for broad coverage of the range of issues relevant to a particular topic, it is unlikely that two articles which treat of the same subtopic will be published. Advance inquiries will also enable guest editors to furnish prospective contributors with more detailed information about the formatting requirements for submissions. In any event, authors should restrict their contributions to 3,000-4,000 words (about 12 pages, double-spaced).

Please mail inquiries concerning article submissions to the individual editor designated for the relevant issue. All other inquiries (e.g., concerning possible announcements, suggestions of possible law review articles to abstract, notices of new books of interest, etc.) should be sent directly to me.

Richard Nunan
Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
nunanr@ashley.cofc.edu
(803) 953-6522

• From the Editor
• Introduction
  • Legal Aspects of Gay and Lesbian Rights, Richard Nunan
• Articles
  • Thick and Thin Arguments for Gay Constitutional Rights, Toni M. Massaro
  • Same-Sex Marriage and Sex Discrimination, David Benatar
  • Gays in the Military and the Excuse of Constitutional Deference, Richard Nunan
• Bibliography
• Recent Law Review Articles of Interest- Abstracts
• Symposia
• Recent Books of Interest