Book Reviews

In his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, Dennis Thompson discusses two tendencies that lead to the overlooking or obscuring of institutional corruption’s significance. Those who bring or judge charges tend to individualize misconduct. This limits the wrongdoing to the individual who is charged, exonerating other members of the...

Looking at government ethics through the appearance standard, as Dennis Thompson did in his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, reveals the great importance of independence to ethics advice and enforcement. No one is in a worse position to see appearances of impropriety than someone who considers his motives to be good, and his...

In my first post on Dennis Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, I quoted him as saying, "What makes the conduct improper is institutional in the sense that it violates principles that...

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F. Thompson's Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (1995). Despite the book's title, Thompson (a professor at Harvard) has a great deal to say about government ethics that is equally applicable...

This is the second of two posts looking at Kathryn Schulz's excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010), as it applies to local government ethics. This post focuses on how to deal...

It's arguable that a bigger problem than unethical conduct in local government is the way local officials respond to allegations of government ethics violations. Kathryn Schulz's excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in...