In the past ten years, many European companies organised into subcontracting networks have decided to adopt codes of conduct to regulate labour relations and to ensure the respect of fundamental social rights. This paper first determines the context and the issues to be addressed by codes of conduct within networks of companies, and second analyses the terms under which they can be implemented. The paper argues that codes of conduct can complement the standards developed by States, the European Union or (...) the social partners, but that steps should be taken in order to avoid that these texts replace the existing labour law. (shrink)

Judges in multiple US states, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California, and Florida, receive a prediction of defendants’ recidivism risk, generated by the COMPAS algorithm. If judges act on these predictions, they implicitly delegate normative decisions to proprietary software, even beyond the previously documented race and age biases. Using the ProPublica dataset, we demonstrate that COMPAS predictions favor jailing over release. COMPAS is biased against defendants. We show that this bias can largely be removed. Our proposed correction increases overall (...) accuracy, and attenuates anti-black and anti-young bias. However, it also slightly increases the risk that defendants are released who commit a new crime before tried. We argue that this normative decision should not be buried in the code. The tradeoff between the interests of innocent defendants and of future victims should not only be made transparent. The algorithm should be changed such that the legislator and the courts do make this choice. (shrink)

Labour and employment law no longer has a monopoly on regulating labour relations and is facing a crisis as its effectiveness is questioned. Codes of conduct adopted by companies to recognise their social responsibility for the global supply chain are instruments that can usefully complement labour and employment law. The aim of this paper is to analyse in depth the legal nature of codes of conduct and their impact on labour and employment law. Will the use of codes of conduct (...) reinforce the crisis of labour and employment law in the era of globalisation or will these codes be part of a solution to this crisis? Do we have to consider codes of conduct as competitors to labour and employment law or as an opportunity for rethinking the way that labour and employment law norms should be produced and applied? (shrink)

Speedrunning is a kind of ‘metagame’ involving video games. Though it does not yet have the kind of profile of multiplayer e-sports, speedrunning is fast approaching e-sports in popularity. Aside from audience numbers, however, from the perspective of the philosophy of sport and games, speedrunning is particularly interesting. To the casual player or viewer, speedrunning appears to be a highly irreverent, even pointless, way of playing games, particularly due to the incorporation of “glitches”. For many outside the speedrunning community, the (...) use of glitches appears to be cheating. For speedrunners, however, glitches are entirely within the bounds of acceptability. Because of this, however, speedrunning frequently involves sidestepping what are typically taken to be the core challenges of the game. By examining the distinction between the use of glitches and cheating in speedrunning, we can gain a greater understanding of the unique ethos of this activity; that is, we can make sense of what fundamentally constitutes speedrunning as a metagame. I argue that by understanding the code of the game not as rules but as physics, and by examining what actions are deemed impermissible by the speedrunning community – such as hardware modification and hacking – we can see that the ethos of speedrunning has three components: constitutive skills (including dexterity, memorisation and mental fortitude); a collective, fine-grained knowledge of the game and the desire to subvert the intentions of the programmers. Each of these components limits and structures the earlier ones: collective knowledge takes priority over constitutive skills, and subversion takes priority over both. These three components form the ethos that structures speedrunning as a metagame, expressing what speedrunners take to be its central aim. (shrink)

The ultimate goal of the pioneering project outlined in this book is to map our genome--the key to what makes us human--in detail. The Code of Codes is a collective exploration of the substance and possible consequences of th is project in relation to ethics, law, and society.

A review of Katharina Pistor's *The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality* (2019, Princeton University Press).

The Code of Capital significantly advances our understanding of the origins of inequality and provides a framework for evaluating proposed solutions. But reviews have so far missed some of the most important insights of the book, including the author's insistence on the indeterminacy of the law and the corresponding incompleteness of existing solutions to inequality that primarily rely on economic drivers. The review demonstrates the relevance of the book's main contributions for evaluating the shared value thesis for investors and (...) reflects on some of the solutions to the law's indeterminacy proposed in the book, including the author's surprising neglect of the increasing importance of ethics in business when innovation outpaces the law. The review concludes with consideration of the theoretical advancements that The Code of Capital makes for our understanding of inequality in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Arguing that ecological thinking can animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns, this book critiques the instrumental rationality, hyperbolized autonomy, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated. It proposes a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practices. Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson’s scientific projects, the book draws, constructively and critically, on ecological theory (...) and practice, on (post-Quinean) naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theory. Analyzing extended examples from developmental psychology, from medicine and law, and from circumstances where vulnerability, credibility, and public trust are at issue, the argument addresses the constitutive part played by an instituted social imaginary in shaping and regulating human lives. The practices and examples discussed invoke the responsibility requirements central to this text’s larger purpose of imagining, crafting, articulating a creative, innovative, instituting social imaginary, committed to interrogating entrenched hierarchical social structures, en route to enacting principles of ideal cohabitation. (shrink)

Nursing codes of ethics and conduct are features of professional practice across the world, and in the UK, the regulator has recently consulted on and published a new code. Initially part of a professionalising agenda, nursing codes have recently come to represent a managerialist and disciplinary agenda and nursing can no longer be regarded as a self‐regulating profession. This paper argues that codes of ethics and codes of conduct are significantly different in form and function similar to the difference (...) between ethics and law in everyday life. Some codes successfully integrate these two functions within the same document, while others, principally the UK Code, conflate them resulting in an ambiguous document unable to fulfil its functions effectively. The paper analyses the differences between ethical‐codes and conduct‐codes by discussing titles, authorship, level, scope for disagreement, consequences of transgression, language and finally and possibly most importantly agent‐centeredness. It is argued that conduct‐codes cannot require nurses to be compassionate because compassion involves an emotional response. The concept of kindness provides a plausible alternative for conduct‐codes as it is possible to understand it solely in terms of acts. But if kindness is required in conduct‐codes, investigation and possible censure follows from its absence. Using examples it is argued that there are at last five possible accounts of the absence of kindness. As well as being potentially problematic for disciplinary panels, difficulty in understanding the features of blameworthy absence of kindness may challenge UK nurses who, following a recently introduced revalidation procedure, are required to reflect on their practice in relation to The Code. It is concluded that closer attention to metaethical concerns by code writers will better support the functions of their issuing organisations. (shrink)

Business codes are an oft-cited management instrument. But how common are codes among multinationals? And what is their content? In an unprecedented study, the codes of the largest corporations in the world have been collected and thoroughly analyzed. This paper presents the results of that study. Of the two hundred largest companies in the world, 52.5% have a code. More than half of these codes describe company responsibilities regarding quality of products and services (67%), adherence to local laws and (...) regulations (57%) and the protection of the natural environment (56%). Many codes make reference to principles governing stakeholder relations (e.g. transparency (55%), honesty (50%) and fairness (45%)), corporate core values (e.g. teamwork (43%)), appropriate conduct among employees (e.g. discrimination (44%) and intimidation (43%)) and treatment of company property by employees (e.g. conflict of interests (52%), corruption (46%) and fraud (45%)). Monitoring compliance with the code is addressed in 52% of the codes. Based on this content study, three types of codes are distinguished: the stakeholder statute (72%), the values statement (49%) and the code of conduct (46%). The results of this inquiry present a benchmark for the evaluation and development of both individual and international business codes. (shrink)

In a perfect world, physicians and drug producers would have only one goal: to advance the health of their patients. Unfortunately, ours is not a perfect world. While every physician’s prime responsibility—by oath and by law—is to the patient, every pharmaceutical producer’s first and foremost obligation, by design, is to shareholders and employees. Their ultimate objectives are diagonally diverse. This situation calls for a code of ethics to govern the marketing and prescription of pharmaceuticals. This paper attempts to identifythe (...) business practices prevailing in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, in order to provide a basis for constructing an appropriate code of ethics. The research is based on surveys or in-depth interviews of physicians, patients, retail pharmacists, and drug manufacturers. (shrink)

In Regina v. Murray, (2000, Ont S.Ct.J.) the learned trial judge, Justice Gravely, errs in his interpretation and application of the law of mens rea in the offense of willfully attempting to obstruct justice under section 139(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada. In view of his findings of fact and law, including the determination that the accused knowingly and intentionally committed the actus reus of the offense and the absence of any suggestion that he lacked awareness of any (...) relevant facts, there is no question in law but that Kenneth Murray was liable to be, and actually should have been, convicted. Nonetheless, the trial judge concluded that Murray’s alleged belief, that his actions were required by his duty to his client, raised a reasonable doubt about his intention to obstruct justice and entitled him to be acquitted. -/- In his reasons for judgment, the trial judge analyzes mens rea as if there is a “color of right” defense to the offense of obstruction of justice. In law, however, no such defense exists to this offense. Consequently, even if Mr. Murray did “honestly believe” that he had a duty to his client not to disclose the existence of the video tapes, that belief could not provide him with an exculpatory defence. In Canada, pursuant to common law and section 19 of the Criminal Code, mistakes of law do not excuse accused persons from responsibility for criminal conduct in the absence of a statutory exception. No exception exists for the offense of obstruction of justice. Yet the Crown did not choose to appeal and thereby signaled its acceptance of the legal analysis adopted by the trial judge. By contrast, if the analysis proposed in this piece had been adopted, the Crown should have prevailed at trial and, if unsuccessful at trial, would have had a right of appeal on a question of law. -/- At least two tendencies converge as significant influences shaping the outcome in the Murray case. The central tendency, discussed in Part I of this article, is the trial judge’s treatment of the accused’s alleged mistake about his legal duty as if it were a mistake about a question of fact which therefore could give rise to a reasonable doubt about intention or culpable awareness. This approach to mistaken beliefs ignores the distinction between mistakes of law and mistakes of fact, and then characterizes all mistakes as mistakes of fact. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in the case law. In recent years however, as explained below, the judiciary has rejected that approach in a number of leading cases and ruled that mistakes which are actually mistakes about the meaning, scope, or application of the law are subject to the general rule and do not provide an accused with an exculpatory defense. The relationship between mistake of law and mens rea in Canadian criminal law has also been the subject of critical scholarly comment in Canada in recent years. The Murray decision provides evidence that, despite clarification by the Supreme Court, in some lower courts the unrefined approach to mistaken belief continues to shape the legal analysis of criminal culpability, even when the mistaken belief is overtly a belief about the law. This will not change until the proper characterization of mistaken beliefs as legal or factual becomes a deliberate and common-place aspect of case analysis at the trial court level. -/- The other tendency, discussed in Part III of this article, is one that often appears as a companion to the first - the judicial tendency to perceive and invoke analytical legal ambiguity in favour of accuseds more readily in cases in which the impugned conduct involves the discretionary exercise of authority which, when used appropriately, is fully legitimate and essential to the normal functioning of the existing socio-legal order. Of course, courts are strongly influenced by the arguments put to them by counsel. And counsel, acting on behalf of client groups with particular group interests may, consciously or unconsciously, favour the development of those lines of analysis which are protective of that interest or associated institutional interests. One of the reasons for scrutinizing the Murray case is that it provides a concrete context for discussion of those issues in relation to an actual decision made by Crown prosecutors. The case provides an occasion to examine a specific example of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, its implications for the administration of criminal justice, and its broader potential impact on the public interest. [See also errata in UNBLJ 2002 volume 52 at pp 309-310.]. (shrink)

In this article, we distinguish between a ‘game code of conduct’, an ‘ethical and/or legal code of the military profession’, ‘codes of social intercourse’, and a ‘code of respect’, and we assess to what extent these codes are reflected in the chivalrous behaviour we see today. Chivalry has developed from archaic medieval game codes of conduct into a codification regarding the laws of war and humanitarian law, but also in behavioural standards that are formalized in books of (...) etiquette. However, these forms of moral codes of conduct do not overcome the problem of benevolent sexism, due to the fact that ‘chivalry’ is in essence a masculine ideology that excludes women from the military profession. Eventually, chivalric codes of social intercourse might develop into a code of respect, which may solve this issue. (shrink)

This book is a literary-historical study of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides' great Code of Jewish law, organized around five characteristics repeatedly emphasized by Maimonides himself: codificatory form, scope, classification, language and style, philosophy and law. The analysis attempts to correlate his own self-perception, his own characterization and evaluation of his work, with the actual product--an objective assessment of the constructs, categories, and conclusions of his work, shaken free of struts and preconceptions.

Globalization theories posit organizational convergence, suggesting that Codes of Ethics will become commonplace and include greater consideration of global issues. This study explores the degree to which the Codes of Ethics of 157 corporations on the Global 500 and/or Fortune 500 lists include the "third generation" of corporate social responsibility. Unlike first generation ethics, which focus on the legal context of corporate behavior, and second generation ethics, which locate responsibility to groups directly associated with the corporation, third generation ethics transcend (...) both the profit motive and the immediate corporate environment. Third generation ethics are grounded in responsibilities to the larger interconnected environment. The results of the study suggest convergence, insofar as Codes of Ethics are becoming standard communication features of corporations across region and industrial sector but still manifest a primary concern with profits and those behaviors which are mandated by law. Only corporations headquartered in the European Union demonstrate a significant degree of global consciousness and reflexivity. However, there is some evidence that third generation ethics and thinking are becoming part of the corporate landscape. More then three quarters of the corporations made at least some reference to third generation ethics. (shrink)

Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. This objective book views these oblique circumstances from two perspectives: that of the person who faces a possible conflict between the claims of morality and law and must choose whether or not (...) to obey the penal code; and that of the people who make and uphold laws and must decide whether to treat someone with a moral claim to disobey differently from ordinary lawbreakers. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws. He also discusses techniques of amelioration of punishment for conscientious lawbreakers, asking how far legal systems should go to accomodate individuals who break the law for reason of conscience. Drawing from numerous examples of conflicts between law and morality, Greenawalt illustrates in detail the positions and predicaments of potential lawbreakers and lawmakers alike. (shrink)

The phrase “statements of fact” has a clear, unequivocal ring. It speaks of a stable place untouchable by contests in epistemology and in more secular places, around questions of constructivism, subjectivism, and the politics of knowledge. It offers fixity, a locus of constancy in a shifting landscape where traditional certainties have ceased to hold, maintains a vantage point outside the fray, where knowledge-seekers can continue to believe in some degree of “correspondence” between items of knowledge and events in the world. (...) Within the social institutions and practices where knowledge is an issue, it designates a secure starting place for deliberation, a way of ensuring that processes of decision-making remain cognizant of the “realities” they have to address.In the institutions of knowledge production and knowledgeable practice that generate the examples I appeal to in this essay – medicine and law – “statements of fact” appear to comprise an incontestable core around which interpretive strategies may indeed have to be enlisted, but which itself functions as a kind of interpretation-exempt zone. There are good reasons for its retaining that status, for resisting the instabilities and sheer whimsicalities that would follow from dislodging it. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of an ethics framework based on the Public Health Code of Ethics to guide rationing decisions during a pandemic flu crisis involving a shortage of ventilators. While the law provides public health officials with authority to act, public health officials, as community leaders and health department managers, must address complex questions about how they should use their legal authority, how they can ethically justify a particular action, how they should engage community stakeholders in decision (...) making, and how the process of public justification should take place. Recognising the need for a tool that could help public health officials manage ethical tensions in practice, such as allocation of scarce resources, the Public Health Leadership Society led efforts to develop a Public Health Code of Ethics. The 12 Principles in the Code were written to express the general norms implicit in the practice of public health professionals. The Code offers no hierarchical weighting of the different principles and anticipates that weights and specification of the principles would take place in the context of each community through a process of engagement between public health officials and community stakeholders about specific cases. We describe how public health officials can use the Code to guide deliberation in helping communities prepare to address the tragic choices when allocating scarce ventilators in an influenza pandemic. (shrink)

It is rare in the extreme for a judge to embed an enigma, here an intentionally encrypted message, in the text of a judgment. Using the occasion of the cypher inserted into the judgment of Peter Smith J in Baigent v Random House, this article patiently reconstructs the humanist concept of aenigmata iuris or legal enigmas so as properly to interpret this recent use. Legal enigmas are shown to be the residues of forgotten histories, references to lost texts, marks left (...) by encounters between law and its now marginal literary and poetic sources. Where current legal use treats enigmas as mere obscurities, this article argues that the enigma should be apprehended and appreciated as an image of juristic invention, the moment of devising a decision, the instant of creative encounter between ‘the sciences liberall’, doctrine and law. (shrink)

We thank our commentators for their thoughtful responses to our paper1 covering among other issues the relationships of ethics law and professional codes, the tensions between ethical universalism and cultural relativism and the phenomenon of moral judgement required when ethical norms conflict, including the norms of patient care versus obligations to others both now and in the future. Although the comments deserve more extensive discussion, in what follows we respond briefly to specific aspects of each commentary and remind readers that (...) professional codes of ethics are necessarily brief and that the International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME) explicitly refers to the World Medical Association’s (WMA) mutually concordant and far more extensive ‘body of policies’.2 Sarela raises a fundamental and, as stated in the commentary, unresolved debate: ‘should ethics shape law or is it the converse’?3 We understand the ‘global medical ethos’ represented in the WMA’s revised ICoME to be firmly embedded in the assumption that ethics should shape law and that only where laws are so shaped do people governed by them have an ethical obligation to obey them. For the medical profession, laws permitting participation in torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading practices and punishments are categorically unethical, and therefore, doctors must not facilitate or participate in them—difficult as it may be for some doctors in some regions or environments to act accordingly. Schantz and Mansoori claim that ‘if a code of ethics is an act of professional self-regulation and professional self-regulation is community-dependent, then a code of ethics cannot be …. (shrink)

This study examines the similarities and differences in pre- and post-Sarbanes-Oxley corporate ethics codes and codes of conduct using the framework of structuration theory. Following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation in 2002 in the United States, publicly traded companies there undertook development and revision of their codes of ethics in response to new regulatory requirements as well as incentives under the U.S. Corporate Sentencing Guidelines, which were also revised as part of the SOX mandates. Questions that remain are (...) whether these new or revised codes are effective means of communicating changed ethical foci and attitudes in organizations. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is used to identify differences and similarities across time and industries by analyzing word networks of 46 pre- and post-SOX corporate codes of ethics. Analyses focus on content and structure of generated word networks as well as resulting factors that emerged from the texts. Results are interpreted from the structuration perspective that content and structure of codes are constrained and enabled by system structures while they function to produce and reproduce those structures. Results indicate that corporate codes of ethics are formal discourses of ethics, laws, and control. Code structure has changed across time, with an increased emphasis on compliance in post-SOX codes. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of findings. (shrink)

While the focus on business ethics is increasing in business school curricula, there has been little systematic scholarly research on the forces which bring about ethical behavior. This article is intended as a first step toward that research by creating a catalogue of hypotheses concerning the efficacy of corporate codes of ethics. The hypotheses are drawn from studies of compliance with law and court decisions and theories of legitimacy, authority, public policy making and individual behavior. Hypotheses are proposed based on (...) the structure of the organization, the source of the code of ethics within the organization, the content of the code, sanctions for noncompliance, protections for refusal to engage in unethical behavior, and rewards for compliance. (shrink)

This book analyzes the implementation of CSR reporting and codes of business conduct and ethics in the legal systems of the USA, Austria and China and their enforcement in international supply chain arbitrations. The book demonstrates that long-term profit maximization is increasingly intertwined with corporate ethics and CSR policies. In order to prevent window-dressing and greenwashing, certain control mechanisms and legal standards are required along the entire supply chain. This book introduces an ethics and CSR system recommending a reward-based whistleblowing (...) mechanism, internal oversight by a CSR and Ethics Committee comprised of independent board members and at least one sustainability expert, and an external, independent and comprehensive assurance of CSR reports provided by auditing firms or newly formed governmental agencies consisting of certified CSR experts. The author emphasizes the significance for supply chain leaders to ensure contractual enforcement of their codes of business ethics and conduct along the supply chain. Against this background, the author created a comprehensive fictitious case scenario covering a supply chain dispute arising from the breach of the supply chain leader’s code of business conduct and ethics by a lower-tier supply chain member. The author acknowledges the fact that in most of the cases the governing law of international supply chain contracts is English law or law based on English law. Thus, the author discusses potential contractual claims for damages arising from a loss of profits caused by a loss of reputation resulting from violations of core provisions of the chain leader’s supplier code of conduct pursuant to English law. As international supply chain disputes usually involve more than two parties, and international arbitration is the ideal means for the resolution of these disputes, the book compares the arbitration rules for consolidations and joinders of some of the most significant international arbitration institutions: SIAC, ICC, AIAC, ICDR, VIAC, CIETAC and HKIAC. The book is directed at legal practitioners, legislators of various jurisdictions, board members of corporations, ethics and compliance officers, academics, researchers and students. It is the author’s main goal that the book serves as an inspirational source for the establishment or the improvement of a corporate ethics and CSR system preventing window-dressing and greenwashing and covering the entire supply chain. Furthermore, it is intended that students develop a deeper understanding for the enforcement of corporate ethics and CSR policies. (shrink)

For any profession, establishing codes of ethics that are both practically relevant and up to date is an ongoing challenge. Law enforcement is no exception to this as agencies are faced with an evolving modern environment. With changes in technology, types of policing, and sources of societal conflict there is a potential array of new or evolving ethical considerations that confront the profession. Attempts to distill and prescribe law enforcement ethics at the international level have resulted in the creation of (...) the “Law Enforcement Code of Conduct” of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the “Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials” of the United Nations. However, both these codes were created decades ago, so they do not cover some of the more contemporary ethical issues that have arisen. This article compares the content of the IACP and UN codes and identifies a range of ethical issues either absent or insufficiently addressed. Normative themes and issues are organized around the following topics: difficulties in applying the codes, human rights and the use of force, misconduct and integrity, and enforcement and accountability. (shrink)

The draft Code of Conduct for Research is an important initiative towards assisting the scientific community in complying with the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). However, its approach towards cross-border data sharing should be reconsidered to clarify the ambiguities inherent in the legal requirements for the cross-border sharing of health data in the POPIA. These ambiguities include the concept of ‘transfer of information’, the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer, (...) the nature of consent for cross-border sharing and the scope of the recipient third party. We suggest that the draft Code of Conduct for Research can be improved by: Explaining or defining the concept of ‘transfer of information’ and when it applies to cross-border sharing in research Clarifying the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer vis-à-vis the other alternatives Expanding on the interpretation and application of consent as a legal mechanism for cross-border transfers Expanding the category of persons who may be recipients of personal information in a third country. (shrink)

A growing number of professional associations and occupational groups are creating codes of ethics with the goal of guiding their members, protecting service users, and safeguarding the reputation of the profession. There is a great deal of literature dealing with the question to what extent ethical codes can achieve their desired objectives. The present paper does not contribute to this debate. Its aim is rather to investigate how rational it is to comply with codes of conduct. It is natural and (...) virtually inevitable for a reflective person to ask why one should pay any attention to ethical codes, in particular if following a code is not in one’s own interest. In order to achieve the aim of this paper, I shall (in “Quasi-reasons for complying with an ethical code” section) discuss reasons that only appear to be reasons for complying with a code. In “Code-independent reasons” section, I shall present genuine practical reasons that, however, turn out to be reasons of the wrong kind. In “Code-dependent reasons” section finally presents the most important reasons for complying with ethical codes. The paper argues that while ethical codes do not necessarily yield reasons for action, professionals can have genuine reasons for complying with a code, which may, however, be rather weak and easily overridden by reasons for deviating from the code. (shrink)

The codes of ethics and conduct of a number of psychology bodies explicitly refer to human rights, and the American Psychological Association recently expanded the use of the construct when it amended standard 1.02 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. What is unclear is how these references to human rights should be interpreted. In this article I examine the historical development of human rights and associated constructs and the contemporary meaning of human rights. As human (...) rights are generally associated with law, morality, or religion, I consider to which of forms of these references most likely refer. I conclude that these references in ethical codes are redundant and that it would be preferable not to refer to human rights in codes. Instead, the profession should acknowledge human rights as a separate and complimentary norm system that governs the behavior of psychologists and should ensure that they have adequate knowledge of human rights and encourage them to promote human rights. (shrink)

After the corporate scandals at the beginning of the new millennium, corporate governance codes were drafted and implemented in national laws and regulations. Unfortunately, due to an ongoing supply of new financial scandals and societal deceptions, our society increasingly distrusts executive directors, non-executive directors and supervisory board members, as they often appeared to play a significant role in these scandals. Nonexecutive directors (NEDs) and supervisory directors (SDs) are often accused of having overlooked the important issues in their supervising role or (...) having failed to intervene in company decision making. Previous research has shown that many NEDs and SDs operate on the basis of their own unwritten rules, which may very well be different from those of their colleagues. In this article we examine whether and how a code of conduct or code of ethics might help to further clarify how NEDs/SDs should act. We also investigated the views of NEDs/SDs themselves. It appears that current corporate governance codes are not sufficient to guide directors on behavioral aspects of their supervisory role. This article shows that a code of conduct could provide this guidance to NEDs/SDs on several issues. First, a code of conduct would compel the Supervisory Board to reflect on its own values. Second, it would compel NEDs/SDs to verbalize their unwritten rules. The results may be applied internationally and could have relevance to the experience of executive directors in addition. This article may serve as a discussion document for other jurisdictions in addition. (shrink)

In The Code of Capital, Katharina Pistor seeks to trace out the ultimate sources of wealth and capital. Her central claim—that wealth and capital are ultimately created by law—is at once more commonsensical and intuitive, on the one hand, and more insightful and provocative, on the other hand, than it might initially seem. At a time when there is deep and widespread interest in and concern about wealth inequality, Pistor argues (successfully, I think) that much inequality can be traced (...) back to oft-ignored legal fixtures. She also argues (unsuccessfully, I think) that we can trace inequality back to law precisely because law is itself partly constitutive of wealth and capital. Fortunately, her more fruitful claims about how law affects the distribution of wealth and capital can be divorced from the less fruitful metaphysical claims about the nature of law and capital and lay the foundation for much future work of interest. (shrink)

This paper discusses the vast continuum between the letter of the law (legality) and the spirit of the law (ethics or morality). Further, the authors review the fiduciary duties owed by the firm to its various publics. These aspects must be considered in developing a corporate code of ethics. The underlying qualitative characteristics of a code include clarity, comprehensiveness and enforceability. While ethics is indigenous to a society, every code of ethics will necessarily reflect the corporate culture (...) from which that code stems and be responsive to the innumerable situations for which it was created. Several examples have been provided to illustrate the ease of applicability of these concepts. (shrink)

Für alle auf dem Buchmarkt Tätigen! Mit kurzen internationalen Einführungen in Institutionen der Informationsversorgung von Public Libraries bis zum Library Law und Intellectual Property. Fachausdrücke werden im Kontext dargestellt und eingeübt. Fragen und ein alphabetisches Vokabelverzeichnis runden jedes Kapitel ab.

The article discusses the characterization of the visualization of visible reality in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The author suggests that semiotic and legal analysis should be used to understand the meaning of the color code of the novel. Semiotic discourse reduces the ambiguity, uncertainty, and expression of the color code to a conscious, discrete, and conditioned meaning of individual colors. Legal analysis helps to better understand the main idea and other aspects of the novel, encoded in (...) colors. Psychological, personal associations, and symbolic methods are used to reveal direct and indirect meaning of the colors used by Dostoyevsky. The basic characterization of colors proposed by Goethe is employed as a key for color decoding. The article also establishes the correlation of the color code of the novel with the colors of the flags of the Russian Empire and the German Confederation. The message and meaning of the same colors of these national flags are contrasted. The interpretation is complemented by the author’s drawings, which enable to visualize the color code that stores and transmits information about national identity. (shrink)

When does a defendant not deserve punishment because he is unaware that his conduct breaches a penal statute? Retributivists must radically rethink their answer to this question to do justice to our moral intuitions. I suggest that modest progress on this topic can be made by modeling our approach to ignorance of law on our familiar approach to ignorance of fact. We need to distinguish different levels of culpability in given mistakes and to differentiate what such mistakes may be about. (...) I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach with special attention to how to contrast offenses from defenses. The alternative I tend to favor probably should not be implemented in existing penal codes. As a result, we are likely to remain dissatisfied with the decisions made by our criminal justice system about the exculpatory effect of ignorance of law. (shrink)

The paper discusses whether codes of ethics are Kantian notions through an analysis of their intention and structure. The article also discusses some of the ideas put forward by William Starr in his article, Codes of Ethics — Towards a Rule-Utilitarian Justification,Journal of Business Ethics 2(2) (May 1983).The paper refers to recent definitions of codes of ethics and considers reasons for the proliferation of such codes. It examines the moral justification for these codes and analyses the underlying ethical theory particularly (...) in relation to Kantian ethics. There is an account of how Kant''s views of the source of morality and moral obligation, the structure and nature of Kantian moral law and the role of the individual and his/her relationship with others, which is relevant to the development of a theoretical base for codes of ethics. There is some discussion of potential problems in the practical application of Kantian ethics to a specific code. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to identify problematic aspects of the use of borrowed terms in the regulation of civil law relations. The study included an analysis of the use of borrowings in the Civil Code of Kazakhstan, conducting a survey to determine the attitude of Kazakh lawyers toward the use of borrowings, the results of which were subjected to statistical processing and comparative analysis, and an analysis of the use of borrowings in the civil law of other (...) countries and EU law, and comparing the specifics of such borrowing with the use of borrowings in the law of Kazakhstan. The analysis of the Kazakh-language version of the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan has shown that the specificity of borrowings in the civil legislation of Kazakhstan is that the Kazakh language was strongly influenced by the Russian language at the time when it was part of the Soviet Union and since then Russian terms have been firmly entrenched in it. A lot of borrowed words and inconsistencies in the terminology of the Kazakh version of the Civil Code are identified, which leads to the conclusion that there is a problem of preserving the linguistic purity and identity of the Kazakh legal language. An examination of the attitude of the selected respondent group to borrowings contained in the Civil Code of Kazakhstan showed that respondents demonstrated a higher level of confidence and acceptance in terms with an established translation while showing less enthusiasm for borrowed legal terms. The study of borrowings in world legislation, including EU law, confirmed that borrowing should be considered as a natural phenomenon for the formation of the legal vocabulary of any language, but the consequences of such borrowing are largely determined by its context. In the present stage of the development of society and the globalisation of international legal cooperation, the main purpose of borrowing should be to simplify legal communication. The terminology of the Kazakh-language version of the Civil Code needs to be revised, and the Kazakh legal language is subject to reform to preserve the linguistic integrity of the Kazakh language. (shrink)