Against Ethics in Law: the problems with applying ethics and integrity rules to doctrinal legal scholarship

Legal scholars are increasingly asked to respect research ethics rules, in particular those concerning conflicts of interest, following a trend begun in social sciences after its crises of replication. However, whereas empirical science needs trust, because it rests on potentially falsifiable data, doctrinal legal scholarship consists of arguments which cannot be faked. It is all on the page. The quality of legal scholarship is served by encouraging readers to engage with what is written as robustly as possible, rather than to consider the integrity of the person who wrote it. The ad hominem path moreover leads to incoherent distinctions between people committed to a view for financial or career reasons, and those committed for ideological ones. Both can narrow the mind of the writer and reduce the quality of their output (although the claim that a good argument cannot be made for payment is a surprising one to hear from lawyers). However, the better response is not to try and get inside the author’s motivations, but to read their words and challenge them. Rules on scholarly conflicts of interests are a distraction from the necessary sceptical and robust engagement with texts.