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Abstract Legal professional ethics has not only a normative role for legal professionals, but also important social functions as an important component of social ethical order. At present, our elucidation and emphasis on the social functions of legal professional ethics are relatively insufficient, which can easily exacerbate the trend of “technicalization” and “compliance” of legal professional ethics itself and lead to real moral dilemmas. Legal professional ethics generates social functions due to its unique social value and influence. By directly adjusting the professional behaviors of legal professionals, legal professional ethics has normative functions. Although these normative functions only apply to the legal professionals’ own business activities, they also have a profound impact on the entire social life and social relations, and exhibit various active effects, forming social functions of legal professional ethics. The adjustment of legal professional ethics to legal professional behaviors is actually the coordination or regulation of social relations inside and outside the legal profession, thereby generating inevitable initiatives on social relations.
Due to the fact that legal professional ethics is the “soft power” of individual and collective activities of legal individuals, as well as the overall social (legal) order and its operation, its social functions inevitably have a three-dimensional composition, presenting a multi-dimensional image. The professional ethics of law not only provides an irreplaceable and important guarantee for the survival, maintenance, and development of the legal profession, as well as the normal operation of law in society, but also has an undeniable radiating impact on the improvement and enhancement of general morality in society, and has multiple functions in politics, economy, and culture. In summary, the social functions of legal professional ethics include the function of consolidating the legal professional community, radiating social morality, as well as broad political functions, important economic functions, and special cultural functions. Among them, legal professional ethics can enhance the spirit of unity and assistance in the legal professional community, as well as the mutual recognition and support among members, and promote cooperations within the professional community; at the same time, it can play an important role in non- legal professionals, promoting the development of general ethics in society and improving the overall moral level of society.
The social functions of legal professional ethics require a certain implementation mechanism. Overall, legal professional ethics mainly achieve its social functions through the following mechanisms: the industry autonomy and homogeneous development of the legal professional community, the institutionalized implementation of legal professional ethics and the moral initiative construction of legal professionals, the translation and coordination of legal professional ethics and social morality, and the cultivation of ethical beliefs in the hearts of legal professionals through legal professional education. The expansion of the functions of legal professional ethics in our country should also be based on the construction of these mechanisms or the promotion of their improvement. Emphasizing the social functions of legal professional ethics is nothing more than emphasizing its normative functions while intentionally demonstrating corresponding social values and practical effects, and can promote the ethical system construction of legal professionals from the perspective of social influences. It can be said that emphasizing the social initiatives of legal professional ethics and promoting the normative construction of legal professional ethics through the reflection of social functions will be an inevitable trend in the development of legal profession and the construction of legal professional ethics system in the new era.
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Published: 03 September 2024
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