Part 1: The Relationship of Legal and Ethical Duties
11 What are the “take home” messages from this Part?
The relationship between law and ethics is complex. The tension between these two ideals will define much of what we will study throughout the course. The following ten principles summarize much of this relationship.
- You should care about this course because it may help keep you out of jail, avoid ethical problems, and understand business operations from a strategic, long-term perspective.
- Law and ethics sometimes overlap, and sometimes diverge.
- For example, it is ethical not to discriminate based on legally protected attributes.
- But, it may also not be ethical to discriminate based on attributes that do not currently have legal protection.
- The “moral minimum” occurs when a company complies with the law, and no more.
- Legal violations are punished through civil litigation or criminal charges, which may result in fines or imprisonment.
- Ethical violations are punished in the courts of public and investor opinion, unless they also result in legal violations (which is common).
- Often, what is ethical today becomes what is legally required tomorrow. The example we considered was the history of child labor in the United States.
- The extent to which the law requires ethical behavior depends on the legal relationship between the parties. Fiduciary relationships may look much like ethical relationships, whereas tort-based relationships may legally be quite unethical.
- Undue workplace pressure may lead to both ethical and legal violations.
Exercises
- Find an issue similar to the child labor timeline used previously in this Part. Diagram how the relationship between law and ethics has changed over time for this issue, and note the current relationship between law and ethics for the issue.
