Ethics are virtues that can’t be taught: Sr Adv Sunil Manohar

Nagpur: Senior advocate Sunil Manohar said that lying in the court kills the morality of a lawyer. Manohar made the remark while delivering a lecture on ‘Professional Ethics and Courtroom Etiquettes' for the Vinod Bobde Memorial High Court Bar Association Study Circle on Tuesday.Manohar argued that while etiquettes are learned manners, ethics are innate virtues that cannot be taught or studied and must reside in a lawyer's blood. Using a philosophical experiment, Manohar described a button granting infinite power at the cost of a farmer's life. "None of us would press it," he said, defining ethics as an instinctive refusal to be unfair. He warned against the whitewashed hypocrisy where a practitioner appears professional but lacks mercy or justice.The veteran lawyer added that while a lawyer might eventually lose a case, a client, or the court, they must never lose their conscience. "The first slip is the way to hell," Manohar cautioned, noting that moral decay follows a spiraling downward slide once a lawyer chooses a petty gain over integrity.Quoting famous poet Alexander Pope, Manohar said that "little learning is a dangerous thing." He urged lawyers to drink largely from the spring of wisdom by reading beyond law, into history, mathematics and literature, to sharpen logic. He also said that true etiquette is not a performance or something you can learn. "A lawyer ensures their character remains clear by protecting their own conscience and constantly learning something new. This preserves the sacred foundation of law," he said at the programme held at the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court auditorium.