W. Wesley Pue, (1990) 15 Law and Social Inquiry [formerly American Bar Foundation Research Journal], 49-118
Moral Panic at the English Bar: Paternal vs. Commercial Ideologies of Legal Practice in the 1860's

ABSTRACT

This article examines a period of profound crisis about the English Bar. The metaphor of "moral panic" is invoked in assessing the impact of five notorious cases of barristers' misconduct which fixated public attention between 1859 and 1863. Four of the barristers involved were subjected to "professional discipline" in what was the first spate of disciplinary proceedings for breaches of Bar "etiquette". Professional "ethics" were applied in remarkably selective ways and amounted to a "shutting down" of laissez-faire professional practices. This was a crucial turning point in the English legal profession and the effect was to transform the Bar from a relatively open, unregulated status group into something akin to a rule-bound disciplinary regime.

CONTENTS

1. The notion of moral panic
2. Background to the crisis of the 1860's
3. Scandalous behavior by distinguished judges
4. The sequel: Edwin James, Q.C. - a silk and would be attorney-general disbarred
5. Charles B. Claydon, barrister for the "oppressed" disbarred
6. Digby Seymour, Q.C., "people's" m.p. and the middle temple
7. Denouement: Charles Rann Kennedy and the inner temple
8. Overview: origins, impact, "uses" and implications of the moral panic of the 1860's