The Reconciliation of Loyalty and Public Interest: The Jurisprudential Interpretation and Practical Implementation of Defense Lawyers’ Relative Objective Obligations

Abstract

It is a fundamental legal requirement that public security and judicial personnel fulfill their duty of objectivity and impartiality in case handling. For defense lawyers, as fellow legal professionals, the duty of objectivity is inherently relative. The reconciliation of defense lawyers’ duty of loyalty and their duty to the public interest provides the theoretical foundation for their relative objective obligations. The differences in legal roles, procedural functions, and case-handling capacities between defense lawyers and public security/judicial authorities constitute the practical basis for such relative objectivity. Theoretically, the concept of defense lawyers’ relative objective obligations entails a tripartite relational framework: the defense lawyer’s relationship with the criminal defendant is characterized by the singularity of protecting the defendant’s legitimate interests and the lawyer’s positional independence; the relationship with the prosecutor is both cooperative and adversarial; and the relationship with the judge is collaborative. In practice, the theory of relative objective obligations guides defense lawyers in the collection and use of evidence, the selection of defense strategies, and the articulation of defense arguments.