Debate Shapers In this activity, you will read about two deeplyheld - - PDF document

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

In this activity, you will read about two deeply­held American values, and how they were, and are, in constant tension with each other. Then, you'll read a few brief passages about the actions of people living at the time of those values. The passages demonstrate how individuals have attempted to advance a particular value. Each passage is accompanied by a "value tension vortex," which shows two values. After you read a passage, decide which of the two values you think is being addressed, and then drop it into the vortex. If you are correct, it will stay in the vortex. If the answer is incorrect, it will be pushed out of the vortex. The target learning for today is to able to look at different historical and current events and analyze the event through the values of law and ethics. Let's look at law vs. ethics

Debate Shapers

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

John Adams was the of the founding fathers, the first Vice President, and second President of the United States. Adams believed firmly in republican government, and in the years leading up to the Revolution, he was at the heart of several of the colonies’ legal and ethical challenges to British monarchical authority. He agreed with Thomas Paine’s sentiment that “in America, the law is king.”

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

After the Revolution, Adams insisted that America should be “a government of laws and not of men,” and he helped create our system of checks and balances, to ensure that no part of government becomes so powerful that it becomes a tyrant. Thanks in large part to Adams’ respect for law, America has a firm legal foundation.

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

But don’t overlook the simple fact that Adams would never have been able to set up our republic of laws had not the founders first broken the law by declaring independence. But did they break the law? In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson argued that by declaring independence, they did indeed violate British laws, but they did not violate the laws of the spirit, the laws beyond laws, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” In other words: there are laws, and then there are laws. Jefferson appealed to the higher set of laws, to the moral principles that guide our conduct as human beings—he appealed to ethics.

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

Ideally, laws and ethics exist in harmony with each other: laws are ethical, and ethics are lawful. But this has not always been the case in American history. While sitting in an Alabama jail for leading protests against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote about the dissonance that occurs when laws are

• unethical. There are, wrote Dr. King, “just laws” and

“unjust laws,” and “an unjust law is no law at all.” In defining the difference between just and unjust laws, he wrote, “[a]n unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. . . . An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself . . . [but] a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.”

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

• Dr. King broke unjust laws “openly, lovingly, and with a

willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community . . . is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” Is it all right to break laws that you find to be unethical?

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

However, we must also ensure that laws keep ethics in check. Ethics that are not lawful can be just as dangerous as laws that are not ethical. We need look no further than April 19, 1995, to see what can happen when ethics are not checked by any respect for the law. On that day, Timothy McVeigh detonated five thousand pounds of explosives in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. The building was destroyed, and 168 people were killed, including nineteen children. McVeigh firmly believed that his actions were ethical—that he was attacking a tyrannical government. His actions remind us, however, that just because someone is utterly convinced of his or her ethical rightness, does not automatically mean that person is right, legally or ethically.

3:12

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

Law

(The law is the law and you follow it)

Ethics

(higher set of laws based on moral principles that guide our conduct as human beings)

Law vs. Ethics Spectrum

Where do you stand???

* Helmet Bicycle Law * Slavery (today) * Gum chewing in schools * Death Penalty * Salem Witch Trials (back then) * Signing the Declaration of Independence * Abortion

The Great Debate

Finding the right balance between laws and ethics is an ongoing task: *Founders put their lives on the line to defy Britain in 1776. *President Lincoln grappled with it during the Civil War in 1862 when he suspended habeas corpus (the right of prisoners to be charged with a crime or released) and allowed the government to arrest and detain anyone without cause, to prevent insurrections by those

• pposed to the war.

*Rosa Parks grappled with it in 1955 when she refused to give up her bus seat to white passengers, setting off the Montgomery bus boycott, an important contribution to the civil rights movement.

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

We are, as John Adams said, “a government of laws.” But we are also a people of higher laws. The strength of our democracy rests on our ability to hold both in our minds at the same time. We falter as a democracy when we cling to one above the other.

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

Law or Ethics: 1966 A police officer arrests an 18­year­old student for publicly burning his draft card as a protest against the war in Vietnam. Place the arrow into the vortex where you think the police officer’s action

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

Law or Ethics: 1903 A 66­year­old woman leads hundreds of children on a protest march from Pennsylvania to New York in order to draw attention to child labor practices. Place the arrow into the vortex where you think the woman’s action belongs.

Law vs. Ethics

The Great Debate

Law or Ethics: 1901 A temperance crusader marches into saloons, destroying property and hacking open liquor containers with a hatchet. Place the arrow into the vortex where you think the temperance crusader’s action belongs.

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

Law or Ethics: 1851 A slave­catcher finds a formerly enslaved man who escaped and sought refuge in Boston. The slave­catcher, with the help of the local police, arrests the man and takes him back to his owner’s plantation in Virginia. Place the arrow into the vortex where you think the slave­catcher’s action belongs.

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

Law vs. Ethics

Economy During the recent recession the government gave taxpayer‐funded bailouts to several large businesses, including the companies whose risky and unconventional (but legal) practices created part of the economic problems that led to the recession. Some of the higher management employees continued to get bonuses, even while the company was receiving the bailout money. Some people thought this wrong. Others thought it was necessary to retain the management talent those firms needed. The bonuses were not illegal, at least initially. Immigration According to US law, if an immigrant from Cuba sets foot on US soil s/he can automatically be granted asylum from their native communist Cuba. If a Haitian‐or anyone else, for that matter‐lands on US soil, s/he must prove that persecution, tyranny, injustice, etc., would make it dangerous for that individual to go back to their native country. Some Americans see such an imbalance as unethical. Health Care Abortion‐While it is legal, many people think it is unethical.

two

The Great Debate

In October 2008, the Bush administration proposed and Congress approved a plan to inject $700 billion into financial markets to stabilize the faltering economy.

Law vs Ethics

The Great Debate

Law vs Ethics

LAW ETHICS

What is the argument on behalf of this value? What is the argument on behalf of this value? What evidence supports this value? What evidence supports this value?

The government, which makes the laws; is making an expensive bailout at the taxpayers expense. The words "bailout plan" and the presence

• f government officials at the edge.

The cartoon suggests that the bailout is unethical. The retiree is about to fall off a financial cliff, and government officials are encouraging her to do so. The faces behind the woman look mean and greedy.