Book Review

Legal Advice and Government Accountability

Elizabeth Wolgast’s 1992 book, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations, raises some very important government ethics questions. I will deal with just one of them here.

The term “artificial persons” includes lawyers and government officials who are considered to act in the name of others. Wolgast’s book looks at the problems such artificial persons cause with respect to our ordinary views of such ethical issues as responsibility and accountability.

Too often, Wolgast says, lawyers and government officials hide behind their roles. I’m just representing my client as best I can, lawyers say. I’m just implementing policy, representing and helping my constituents, following legal advice.

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- Fri, 2008-05-09 12:02

The Conditions for Ethics Reform

In an upcoming book, The Rule of Law and Development, Michael Trebilcock and Ron Daniels divide developing countries into three groups (according to an article in last week’s Economist):

1. Those where politicians, lawyers, and the public all support legal reform (e.g., Central Europe after the end of communism);
2. Those where politicians support legal reform, but lawyers and the police do not (e.g., Chile); and
3. Those where lawyers support legal reform, but politicians do not (e.g., Pakistan)

Legal reform succeeds only in the first of these three groups.

With respect to ethics reform, the same is true in the United States. It is not enough for politicians or lawyers alone to support ethics reform.

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- Tue, 2008-03-25 17:09

There's a Lot We Can Learn from Adolf Eichmann -- Really

Adolf Eichmann is the iconic extreme of the government bureaucrat. Not that any of us will hopefully ever be given orders like the ones he was given, but his simply following orders makes anyone question his or her own simply following orders.

There’s a lot more about government ethics that can be learned from Adolf Eichmann, I found from reading Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). When one sees acts that are often done without any thought, that seem so normal, done in a different, frightening context, these acts look grotesque, and we can start to question what we take as normal and natural.

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- Wed, 2008-02-27 12:46

ERC's 2008 National Government Ethics Study Released

The President of City Ethics, Carla Miller, recently participated in the 2007 NGES Advisory Group in the review of the Ethics Resource Center's first National Government Ethics Study which was released Jan. 30, 2008. You can download a copy by registering at the ERC's website: http://www.ethics.org/

From the Executive Summary:

Public Trust is at Risk

  • Rates of misconduct in government are already high — nearly 60 percent of government employees see misconduct.
  • At present, 30 percent of misconduct across government goes unreported to management.

ERC Releases Report:

The Ethics Resource Center in Washington DC has released an interesting document for anyone active in the Ethics & Compliance Officer field - see the quotes below which give a taste of the subject of the document:

The Ethics Resource Center (See: http://www.ethics.org/CECO/) wrote:
"This paper responds to a problem expressed by many professionals tasked with leading the ethics and compliance efforts in their organizations: most CECOs do not believe they have been given sufficient authority and resources to accomplish their missions. Even further, they struggle to raise the discussion with executives and directors."
- Mon, 2008-01-28 12:43