ABSTRACT
ABA Commission Report After a series of meetings of key figures in Georgia's legal community in 1988, in February 1989, the Supreme Court of Georgia created the Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism (CJCPGA), the first entity of this kind in the world created by a high court to address legal professionalism. The framework for CJCPGA appears to draw on the work of the American Bar Association's (ABA) 1986 report entitled In the Spirit of Public Service: A Blueprint for the Rekindling of Lawyer Professionalism (ABA Report). On December 31, 1999, Judge Hugh Lawson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia signed a Consent Order and Final Judgment that settled an action seeking sanctions against E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company for alleged litigation misconduct in earlier product liability cases. According to the Consent Order, the monies were to be devoted "to fostering and teaching professionalism and ethics in the practice of law."