The Ethics of Prosecution Lawyers

This article examines the ethics of prosecution laweyers in England and Wales at a number of interrelated levels. First, it explores how prosecution lawyers do, and should, behave when faced with micro-ethical dilemmas in their work, documenting a gap between the relevant ethical codes and actual practice. Second, it critically analyses those codes, since the norms they embody are themselves morally problematic. Third it considers how the legal profession as a whole should seek to ensure ethical behaviour amongst its members, and raises the macro-ethical question of whether this is possible given that the criminal process can itself be characterised as fundamentally unethical.