Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is Against the Law

As part of its Constitutional Series the CATO Institute is offering a book on the ethics in an environment where blowing the whistle is increasingly becoming a punishable event in the corporate world as well as by law:

Trapped: When Acting Ethically is Against the Law

Since Enron's collapse in 2002, the federal government has stepped up its campaign against white-collar crime. In doing so, contemporary federal criminal law has created a "Catch-22," in which businesspeople are foced to act either unethically or illegally.

Cato Institute senior fellow and Georgetown University business professor John Hasnas examines the ethical dilemmas raised by over-criminalization. "Because there is an increasing divergence between the demands of the law and the demands of ethics," Hasnas explains, "current federal criminal law incentivizes and in some cases mandates unethical behavior by businesspeople."

In creating white-collar criminal law, the federal government has eviscerated the liberal safeguards of the traditional criminal law to permit conviction for merely negligent or innocent actions and to circumvent the presumption of innocence, the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and the attorney-client privilege.

Thus, federal criminal law creates serious problems for businesses that wish to respect their employees. According to Hasnas: "It gives corporations strong incentives to invade employees' privacy, deny them the presumption of innocence, and breach promises of confidentiality."

Hasnas concludes that the solution to the problem of white collar crime does not rest with more vigorous federal enforcement efforts: "With regard to the offenses that can adequately be handled by civil liability, the proper solution may be absaining from any efforts at criminal enforcement at all."

Having taught courses on applied ethics in the fields of Business, Medicine & Biotechnology, Society, Education, and the Military, this would be a text that would offer insight on the ethical bind that causes an individual to hide behind career and conformity to social pressures, or pursue a course of action that will stain their professional reputation, adversely affect their career choices, and blast them into the limelight of public scrutiny. It also examines the changing legal environment that puts compliance with laws that may serve to keep improper or illegal actions of corporations or governments secret and hidden from the eyes of the general public.

In the current environment of an overly secret, dysfunctional business and governmental environment, this is an area of great concern for anyone studying--and trying to apply--ethics. At only $12.95 plus shipping, it will be worth checking out... I am thinking about sending copies to George W. Bush (if he can read), Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, David McCourt, Dennis Hastert, William Frist, Jack Walch, Steve Forbes, Tom DeLay, Randall Cunningham, and the CEOs of the top 10 corporations in the Forbes 100.