LAW 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Perjury, Sexual Assault

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Ethical Reasoning and the Law
What is Ethics?
Ethics is the critical, structured examination of how individuals and
institutions should behave when their actions affect others
o Critical because it is about more than just describing existing patterns
of behaviour
o Structured because it is about more than intuitions and gut reactions
About providing reasoned arguments
Examples of Ethical Statements
I stopped to help because it was the right thing to do
It is good to donate to charity
It is wrong to lie to your friends
Taking advantage of someone is unethical
Case 1: Ethics in Life
Summary Sami sees an iPod fall out of a girls bag. She doesnt notice, and
no one else has seen.
o What do you think is the right thing to do here?
o What would you think of Sami as a person if you knew she had kept it?
o Would giving it back be basic ethics or would it make you admire Sami
o What if it had been a $100 bull instead of an iPod?
Case 2: Ethics in Business
Summary Johnny, a cashier, realises that a customer gave him two $20 bills
instead of one. The customer had already left the store.
o What should Johnny do?
o If you were Johnnys manager, what would you want Johnny to do?
o If you were the customer, and you realized later what had happened,
what would you think of Johnny & the store?
Ethical Reasoning
Figuring out the right thing to do is usually easy
Ethics becomes harder when important ethical values or principles conflict
Ethical judgment involves weighing competing values or principles
Principles and Values
In ethical reasoning, we appeal to principles and values
A value is something good that we ought to promote
o ie honesty, kindness
A principle is a rule, usually grounded in a value, that tells you what to do
o You should tell the truth
o You should help other people
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Document Summary

She doesn(cid:495)t notice, and no one else has seen. Case 2: ethics in business instead of one. Ethical reasoning: figuring out the right thing to do is usually easy, ethics becomes harder when important ethical values or principles conflict, ethical judgment involves weighing competing values or principles. Ethical principles and values reasons: consequences, we should promote good consequences and avoid bad ones, for all concerned, fairness/justice, we should make sure that good and bad consequences are distributed, rights and duties fairly. We should pay our debts and treat like cases alike: we should protect rights and perform duties. Often (cid:498)nearly absolute(cid:499: we should consider what kind of people we want to be, and what, character/virtue example we want to set. In such cases, we need to do our best to balance competing principles and values, to figure out which reasons are the most weighty.

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