a. When Jean Valjean, a character in Les Miserable, steals a loaf of bread for
his starving family, he faces just such a moral dilemma. Survival versus the general
good is at stake. The law punishes him for his act with life imprisonment. This is a no-
win situation in which choosing act "A" will result in the violation of principle "B", and
choosing act "B" will violate principle "A". Some would argue that Valjean's situation is
one in which one moral principle (the general good/the moral injunction against theft,
especially in times of scarcity).
b. Others would argue that some moral principles are unconditional and not
subject to negotiation (that petty theft in time of famine is a serious transgression, even
if a starving family is at issue). In any case, ethical dilemmas may often be turned over
to the courts to resolve. This doesn't mean, however, that ethical standards are law
(though ethics is an important underpinning of the law).
c. Often, ethical choices are weighed on the scales of justice. The courts are,
however, not necessarily better equipped to handle moral dilemmas. In a feature article
on the role of the courts in resolving ethical dilemmas like euthanasia and abortion, the
following observation was made: "Cases that tell people how to live their private lives
arouse passionate controversy and are correspondingly difficult to settle."24 Split
decisions often point up the difficulty of making ethical choices, even for the courts.
ETHICS, THE MOVEMENT OF THE NINETIES?
2-8.
Michael Josephson, Law Professor and Founder of the Los Angeles-based
Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics (named for his parents), predicts, "The
ethics movement will be to the '90s what the consumer movement was to the `60s."25
Josephson's phones keep ringing off the lines as he receives more and more requests
for his ethics seminars from such diverse groups as the New York State Bar
Association, Levi Strauss & Co., Girl Scouts of the USA, and the Internal Revenue
Service. A former law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, he
specializes in teaching ethics courses to Government officials, business people, and
ordinary citizens. His classes are heated and inspiring as he helps his students see the
"increasing distance between society's emphasis on measures designed to prevent bad
conduct and its incentives to promote good behavior."26 He tries to teach his students
that ethical values are more than a series of rules, that one must look beyond the letter
of the law when considering such principles as justice, fairness, and honesty, and that
personal values are an important starting point for all other values.27 (Perhaps this is
the reason why he named his ethics institute for his parents.)
a. Josephson got involved in the teaching of ethics in 1976 when he was asked
to teach a course on legal ethics in response to the Watergate scandal. Since 1987,
when he founded his ethics institute, he has taught thousands of people in hundreds of
companies and organizations. One of his basic principles reinforces the notion, stated
earlier, that values (to be values) must be practiced: "We judge ourselves by our best
intentions, but we are judged by our last worst act."28
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