Legal Ethics Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Legal Ethics. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.
Aldo Leopold
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms)
[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on.
William James
Just because something was legal didn't automatically make it right.
Carl Hiaasen (Hoot)
Here’s a straightforward initial idea: rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Alternatively stated, bad laws drive out respect for good laws. This is the ethical—even legal—equivalent of Occam’s razor, the scientist’s conceptual guillotine, which states that the simplest possible hypothesis is preferable.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
I spend the rest of the night doing schoolwork. After striking a match and lighting a candal, I sit down at my desk with my quill pen and parchment to write an essay for my ethics class on the legalities of fan fiction.
Fanny Merkin (Fifty Shames of Earl Grey)
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character.
Criss Jami (Healology)
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5))
It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable. Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.
George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London)
All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
Baruch Spinoza
But does legality equal morality? Should something be accepted as ethical simply because it is allowed under law?
Ed Winters (This Is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You))
We must challenge any administration both publicly and legally if they violate ethics or the law, or betray the public they’re supposed to serve.
Sharyl Attkisson (Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington)
You didn't learn the Bible as a Fundamentalist. You learned fragments of Old Testament legalism mixed with Behaviorism & Nietzschean ethics
Jeri Massi
Again, those also who are ignorant of legal regulations which they are bound to know, and which are not hard to know, they chastise; and similarly in all other cases where neglect is thought to be the cause of the ignorance, under the notion that it was in their power to prevent their ignorance, because they might have paid attention.
Aristotle (Ethics)
The moment has come to give fascism a usable short handle, even though we know that it encompasses its subject no better than a snapshot encompasses a person. Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
The value-driven AI rests on four pillars: human safety and human rights; strong ethical and unbiased legal systems; morality-driven media; and morality-based business and research. They complement each other.
Sri Amit Ray (Value Driven Artificial Intelligence Principles and Practices)
Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal” were well known in the legal and ethical codes of Sumerian city-states, pharaonic Egypt, and the Babylonian Empire.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
The legal system has been designed by governments and corporations to protect them from the common people.
Steven Magee
The president and his aides, Ervin answered, had “a lust for political power.” That lust, he explained, “blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements; to Aristotle’s aphorism that the good of man must be the end of politics.” Nixon had lost his moral authority as president. His secret tapes—and what they reveal—will probably be his most lasting legacy. On them, he is heard talking almost endlessly about what would be good for him, his place in history, and, above all, his grudges, animosities, and schemes for revenge. The dog that never seems to bark is any discussion of what is good and necessary for the well-being of the nation.
Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men)
If a curiously selective plague came along and killed all people of intermediate height, 'tall' and 'short' would come to have just as precise a meaning as 'bird' or 'mammal'. The same is true of human ethics and law. Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees in this way is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [T]he only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.
Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design)
The only way a society of diverse people can survive without tearing itself apart over differences in nature is by accepting that ALL people are different, and that no single one of us is more or less deserving of decent treatment, compassion, legal and ethical equality, justice, life, or love, than any other.
Christina Engela (Autumn Burning: Dreadtime Stories for the Wicked Soul)
There's ilegal with ethical and there is legal with un-ethical.
vhalsky
Right isn't always legal.
J.S.B. Morse (Gods of Ruin)
Crime exists because immorality is wicked and morality is weak.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
A good lawyer is part con man, part priest -- promising riches, threatening hell. My ethical rules are simple. I won't lie to the court or let a client do it. But I've never been in this position. How far would I go for a woman who mattered? Is there anything I wouldn't do to win?
Paul Levine (Flesh & Bones (Jake Lassiter, #7))
When a person has fallen in love with God, both his ethical commitments and aesthetical pleasures become focused and satisfying. But when the religious is lost, ethics devolves into, first, a fussy legalism, and then is swallowed up completely by the lust for personal satisfaction.
Robert Barron (Seeds of the Word: Finding God in the Culture)
You should try inviting AI to help you in everything you do, barring legal or ethical barriers. As you experiment, you may find that AI help can be satisfying, or frustrating, or useless, or unnerving. But you aren’t just doing this for help alone; familiarizing yourself with AI’s capabilities allows you to better understand how it can assist you—or threaten you and your job.
Ethan Mollick (Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI)
Company leaders should understand regulatory compliance because it is crucial for maintaining legal and ethical business practices. A comprehensive understanding of compliance ensures they can make informed decisions, minimize legal risks, and safeguard the company's reputation, ultimately contributing to its long-term success and stability.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
But many of these Silicon Valley entrepreneurs hard at work creating our technological future pay precious little attention to the public policy, legal, ethical, and security risks that their creations pose to the rest of society.
Marc Goodman (Future Crimes)
It is a disturbing sign of the times when the two most transformative science technologies affecting the globe—biotechnology and nanotechnology—are governed by no external ethical or legal frameworks to protect public safety and other public interests, despite the fact that both industries have benefited from heavy taxpayer-funded government support.
Ralph Nader (The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future)
Our fights must be rooted in experiences, in stories, and in anecdotes. People remember these more than sterile numbers or facts. Myths are powerful magic and can turn enemies into friends. In a world where too many still tell stories that some are illegal and that to be free we must control the movement of others, the work of making new myths is essential.
Syed Khalid Hussan (Undoing Border Imperialism (Anarchist Interventions, 6))
[I]t is a mistake to rush to impose the individual ethical responsibility that the corporate structure deflects. This is the temptation of the ethical which, as Zizek has argued, the capitalist system is using in order to protect itself in the wake of the credit crisis - the blame will be put on supposedly pathological individuals, those’ abusing the system’, rather than on the system itself. But the evasion is actually a two step procedure - since structure will often be invoked (either implicitly or openly) precisely at the point when there is the possibility of individuals who belong to the corporate structure being punished. At this point, suddenly, the causes of abuse or atrocity are so systemic, so diffuse, that no individual can be held responsible… But this impasse - it is only individuals that can be held ethically responsible for actions, and yet the cause of these abuses and errors is corporate, systemic - is not only a dissimulation: it precisely indicates what is lacking in capitalism. What agencies are capable of regulating and controlling impersonal structures? How is it possible to chastise a corporate structure? Yes, corporations can legally be treated as individuals - but the problem is that corporations, whilst certainly entities, are not like individual humans, and any analogy between punishing corporations and punishing individuals will therefore necessarily be poor. And it is not as if corporations are the deep-level agents behind everything; they are themselves constrained by/expressions of the ultimate cause-that-is-not-asubject: Capital.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
Islamic legal rulings stipulate that a treaty cannot be forever, since it must be immediately void should the Muslims become capable of fighting them.” What these treaties did not imply was a permanent system in which the Islamic state would interact on equal terms with sovereign non-Muslim states: “The communities of the dar al-harb were regarded as being in a ‘state of nature,’ for they lacked legal competence to enter into intercourse with Islam on the basis of equality and reciprocity because they failed to conform to its ethical and legal standards.” Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts.
Henry Kissinger (World Order)
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that there is something seriously wrong with this system. Capitalism is a system that puts rich people on a pedestal, legalizes greed, and enables the rich to exploit the poor. It’s morally wrong. What kind of a God would support something so immoral? Would Jesus support the exploitation of the poor by the rich? No, of course not. If you think of yourself as a follower of Christ’s teachings, if you consider yourself a good person, you are morally obligated to be against greed. It’s your duty as a good person to be against exploitation. It’s your moral duty to be against predatory capitalism.
Oliver Markus Malloy (How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book)
It’s not some romanticized Atticus Finch-type picnic. You’d probably love it, the whole risk of it all, but it’s not without a price. Out there in this city when you pass the bar, it’s all broken dreams and out-of-reach stars. You have to be brilliant, and you have to throw away your social life, your hobbies, but more than that you can’t get your moral values mixed up with legal ethics. They’ll both clash whenever you least expect it, and when you hit a crossroad you have to know when to go left or right or when to just blindly go forward… can you do that?
Rebecca McNutt (Bittersweet Symphony)
My father is a businessman trying to provide for his wife and children and those friends he might need someday in a time of trouble. He doesn’t accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would have condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a man of extraordinary force and character. What you have to understand is that he considers himself the equal of all those great men like Presidents and Prime Ministers and Supreme Court Justices and Governors of the States. He refuses to live by rules set up by others, rules which condemn him to a defeated life. But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a certain power since society doesn’t really protect its members who do not have their own individual power. In the meantime he operates on a code of ethics he considers far superior to the legal structures of society.
Mario Puzo (The Godfather (The Godfather #1))
[Immigrants] who come from anywhere there is hunger, unemployment, oppression, and violence and who clandestinely cross the borders of countries that are prosperous, peaceful, and rich in opportunity, are certainly breaking the law, but they are exercising a natural and moral right which no legal norm or regulation should try to eliminate: the right to life, to survival, to escape the infernal existence they are condemned to by barbarous regimes entrenched on half the earth's surface. If ethical considerations had any pervasive effect at all, the women and men who brave the Straits of Gibraltar or the Florida Keys or the electric fences of Tijuana or the docks of Marseilles in search of work, freedom, and a future should be received with open arms.
Mario Vargas Llosa (The Language of Passion: Selected Commentary)
Businesses must operate within the legal framework, respecting the rules of the game.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Just because it is legal to do, it does not make it an ethical, honorable, moral or professional choice.
Loren Weisman
We become wise the day we understand the difference between what is legally right to do and what is the right thing to do. They don't always match.
Fady Asly (Utopias and Realities: A Colorful Journey Through Life)
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Hence: Laws come and go; ethics stay.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5))
There is a fun fact that suggests America has 40 lawyers for every engineer, whereas China, emerging as one of the world’s most dynamic nations, has 40 engineers for every lawyer. I am not sure exactly what that says, but it can’t be a plus for the United States. It may only be coincidence that the explosion in ethical and legal lapses in the business world parallels proportionately the increase in lawyers.
Jon M. Huntsman Sr. (Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times)
Legal, regulated voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have far less potential for abuse, and when they are available, there is no need to make it easy for people to find out how to kill themselves.
Peter Singer (Practical Ethics)
Yes, we live in a free-market democracy, but the drug and medical device industries operate more like kleptocracies. Though most of it is legal, it is not ethical and is, in effect, a form of legal extortion. Likewise,
William Davis (Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor)
The mysteries of life include the external and the internal conundrums that each person encounters in a world composed of competing ideologies and agents of change. Conflicting ideas include political, social, legal, and ethical concepts. Agents of change include environmental factors, social pressure to conform, aging, and the forces inside us that made us into whom we are as well as the forces compelling us to be a different type of person.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
I needed to be sure you’re one hundred percent in this with me. A baby is the only thing that could permanently tie your life to mine. Legally, at least. Ethically… well, I will always be in your life, whether you know I am or not.
H.D. Carlton (Hunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse, #2))
All work is noble, if it is legal and ethical, so do your best, whether you are first, second, or last. Never lose an opportunity, a job, an election, a competition, or anything else because you were too lazy to give it your best effort.
Buzz Aldrin (No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon)
The worst problem of modernity lies in the malignant transfer of fragility and antifragility from one party to the other, with one getting the benefits, the other (unwittingly) getting the harm, with such transfer facilitated by the growing wedge between the ethical and the legal.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)
Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
I have explained to my children that though this act is not legal, it is nonetheless moral, in a neat reversal of Starbucks' historical tax avoidance, which though legal, was not moral. Teaching children to steal from Starbucks is a way of making ethics fun for kids and bringing philosophy alive.
Stewart Lee (Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016)
The law cannot be our ultimate moral guide. Slavery was lawful. The Holocaust was legal. Segregation was legally sanctioned...Simply put, the law does not dictate our ethics. God does. So it should not surprise us that the One we follow was executed as a criminal, and that there will be times when we are called to break unjust laws ourselves.
Craig Greenfield (Subversive Jesus: An Adventure in Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness in a Broken World)
This is a subject I've given a lot of thought to, and I think I have the answer. I've tried to encompass in my theory all the sociological, mythological, religious, philosophical, muscular, economic, cultural, musical, physical, ethical, intellectual, metaphysical, anthropological, gynecological, historical, hormonal, environmental, judicial, legal, moral, ethnic, governmental, linguistic, psychological, schizophrenic, glottal, racial, poetic, dental [this was the logical link] artistic, military, and urinary considerations from prehistoric times to the present.I have been able to synthesize these considerations into one inescapable formulation: men can knock the shit out of women.
Fran Ross (Oreo)
The task thus becomes to track the patterned ways that violence seeks to name as violent that which resists it, and how the violent character of a legal regime is exposed as it forcibly quells dissent, punishes workers who refuse the exploitative terms of contracts, sequesters minorities, imprisons its critics, and expels its potential rivals.
Judith Butler (The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political)
In recent decades, "pluralism" has become something of a buzzword. It is variously employed. Often it is used to argue that no normative ethic, even of the vaguest and most tentative sort, can be "imposed" in our public life. In practice this means that public policy decisions reflect a surrender of the normal to the abnormal, of the dominant to the deviant. Indeed it is of more than passing interest that terms such as abnormal or deviant have been largely exorcised from polite vocabulary among the elites in American life. The displacement of the constitutive by the marginal is not so much the result of perverse decision makers as it is the inevitable consequence of a polity and legal system in which the advantage of initiative lies with the offended.
Richard John Neuhaus (The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America)
Legal practice is, to a great extent, ethically ambivalent. Lawyers pledge to represent their clients zealously, and so they are charged, where their client is wrong, with trying to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. Yet, they also see themselves as officers of the court, or agents of the state, and in that role they should seek to enforce the law as intended and must act honestly.
Joel P. Trachtman (The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win)
In his last remarks about Watergate as a senator, 77-year-old Sam Ervin, a revered constitutionalist respected by both parties, posed a final question: “Why was Watergate?” The president and his aides, Ervin answered, had “a lust for political power.” That lust, he explained, “blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements; to Aristotle’s aphorism that the good of man must be the end of politics.
The Washington Post (The Original Watergate Stories (Kindle Single) (The Washington Post Book 1))
It’s one thing for Russians to act the way they do. Their society is so harsh and unforgiving that in order to get through life, most people are either getting screwed or screwing someone else—and often both. There are few rewards for doing what is right. It takes exceptional individuals like Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza not to descend reflexively into nihilism, dishonesty, and corruption. In the West, and especially in America, it’s different. There’s no question we have our own issues, but Americans like John Moscow, Mark Cymrot, Chris Cooper, and Glenn Simpson have led charmed lives. They went to the best universities, associated with the highest-caliber people, lived in comfortable homes, and operated in a society that at least aspires to honor good conduct and ethical behavior. Everyone is entitled to a legal defense, but this wasn’t about the law—it was an active Russian disinformation campaign. For these people to use their considerable knowledge, contacts, and skills to assist Putin’s cronies in exchange for nothing more than money was even more contemptible than the actions of the Russians themselves. Many Russians can’t help what they do. But Americans like these can, and they act with full cognizance.
Bill Browder (Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath)
Was it that people in the West were worse than people back in Russia? Of course not. But when the only demands on human nature are legal ones, the bar is much lower than the bar of nobleness and honor (those concepts having in any case almost vanished now), and so many loopholes open up for unscrupulousness and cunning. What the law compels us to do is far too little for humaneness: a higher law should be placed in our hearts, too.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 (The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series))
I am a congenital optimist about America, but I worry that American democracy is exhibiting fatal symptoms. DC has become an acronym for Dysfunctional Capital: a swamp in which partisanship has grown poisonous, relations between the White House and Congress have paralyzed basic functions like budgets and foreign agreements, and public trust in government has all but disappeared. These symptoms are rooted in the decline of a public ethic, legalized and institutionalized corruption, a poorly educated and attention-deficit-driven electorate, and a 'gotcha' press - all exacerbated by digital devices and platforms that reward sensationalism and degrade deliberation. Without stronger and more determined leadership from the president and a recovery of a sense of civic responsibility among the governing class, the United States may follow Europe down the road of decline.
Graham Allison (Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?)
Legalism is far more than the conscious belief that “I can be saved by my good works.” It is a web of attitudes of heart and character. It is the thought that God’s love for us is conditioned on something we can be or do. It is the attitude that I offer certain things—my ethical goodness, my relative avoidance of deliberate sin, my faithfulness to the Bible and the church—that support Christ’s work and contribute to God’s goodwill toward me.
Timothy J. Keller (Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism)
We are today engaged in a war. It is an economic war over our sovereignty as human beings with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The “pursuit of happiness” means the right to create wealth through our labor and to enjoy the fruits thereof. The battle now is over who has the moral, the ethical, and the legal right to the fruits of our labor. Are we to be free, or are we to be slaves? Just whose money is it anyway?
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
You might wonder why a waitress, bricklayer, or doctor—individuals neither born into a warrior heritage nor involved in the profession of arms—would want to think of themselves as warriors in today’s society. One could have asked Funakoshi the same question. If you recall, the warrior caste in Okinawa and Japan were abolished shortly after his birth. He no longer had any legal status as a warrior. In fact, he was a school teacher by occupation. But that didn’t change his identity. He was still a member of an elite part of society. Warriors are special people. Since they understand the concept of honor, they set their ethical standards above most of the rest of society. Since they pattern their lives around the pursuit of excellence, they tend to achieve in their chosen vocations. Why would people in today’s society want to think of themselves as warriors? Because warriorship is an extraordinary and powerful way to live!
Forrest E. Morgan (Living the Martial Way: A Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think)
All work is noble, if it is legal and ethical, so do your best, whether you are first, second, or last. Never lose an opportunity, a job, an election, a competition, or anything else because you were too lazy to give it your best effort. Certainly, you need rest and recreation, but keep those in balance with hard work. Remember, while you are partying, someone else is working hard to succeed. It’s okay to be second, as long as you do the absolute best you can do.
Buzz Aldrin (No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon)
Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature. Philosophy, law and ethics, to be effective in a dynamic world must be dynamic; they must be made vital enough to keep pace with the progress of life and science. In recent civilization ethics, because controlled by theology and law, which are static, could not duly influence the dynamic, revolutionary progress of technic and the steadily changing conditions of life; and so we witness a tremendous downfall of morals in politics and business. Life progresses faster than our ideas, and so medieval ideas, methods and judgments are constantly applied to the conditions and problems of modern life. This discrepancy between facts and ideas is greatly responsible for the dividing of modern society into different warring classes, which do not understand each other. Medieval legalism and medieval morals- the basis of the old social structure-being by their nature conservative, reactionary, opposed to change, and thus becoming more and more unable to support the mighty social burden of the modern world, must be adjudged responsible in a large measure for the circumstances which made the World War inevitable.
Alfred Korzybski (Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering (Classic Reprint))
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cult of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working with uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Robert Paxton
None of this is simply a matter of “ethics.” Ethics involves fulfilling legal responsibilities, avoiding obvious conflicts of interest, and behaving in an aboveboard manner. As now routinely taught in graduate schools of business and as required for obtaining many professional licenses, ethics is about how to avoid legal troubles or public relations disasters. Leadership as trusteeship extends way beyond ethics. It goes to the heart of the job. It requires a different way of thinking about the central obligation of leading any institution.
Robert B. Reich (The Common Good)
The legal structure of Islamic marriage is predicated on a gender-differentiated allocation of interdependent claims, which would be thrown into chaos by a same-sex union. In the standard contractual understanding of marriage, the husband holds milk al-nikah, control of the marriage tie, and the wife has a claim to dower and the obligation of sexual exclusivity and availability. Several early jurists considered the possibility of whether these rights and duties could be reallocated – whether a woman could pay a man a dower, for example, and retain control over sex and divorce – and agreed unanimously that such a reallocation is not permitted. Not only are husbands’ and wives’ rights distinct, but each role is fundamentally linked to the sex/gender of the person exercising it. A woman cannot wield control of the marriage tie; a man cannot be contractually bound to sexual availability to his wife. Thus, following that logic, it would not be possible for one woman to adopt the “husband” role and the other to adopt the “wife” role in the marriage of two women. The self-contained logic of the jurisprudential framework does not permit such an outcome.
Kecia Ali (Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence)
Some that read this book will find its Libertarian and Constitutionalist slant a bit obtuse and maybe even off-putting. This author makes no apologies for viewing the history of the eugenics movement from this political perspective. It is the ethical and legal underpinnings of the American Revolution that remain as a guiding light while the eugenics movement continues to reemerge long after its alleged demise. Limited, or rather minimal government, goes a long way to curtail the disconnect that emerges when government grows so large that it no longer feels compelled to heed to the dictates of the governed.
A.E. Samaan (H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator (History of Eugenics, Vol. 2))
the Honour of the Crown, a concept given its Canadian form in such historic Supreme Court decisions as Guerin in 1984, Sparrow in 1990 and, most recently, the Manitoba Métis case in 2013. The Guerin case is one of those Aboriginal victories at the highest court that have shaped Canada over the last forty years. What is the Honour of the Crown? It is the obligation of the state to act ethically in its dealings with the people. Not just legally or legalistically. Not merely administratively or efficiently. But ethically. The Honour of the Crown is the obligation of the state to act with respect for the citizen.
John Ralston Saul (The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence)
He was referring to the fact that ethical birth-control pills, the only legal form of birth control, made people numb from the waist down. Most men said their bottom halves felt like cold iron or balsa-wood. Most women said their bottom halves felt like wet cotton or stale ginger ale. The pills were so effective that you could blindfold a man who had taken one, tell him to recite the Gettysburg Address, kick him in the balls while he was doing it, and he wouldn’t miss a syllable. The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex. Thus did science and morals go hand in hand.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Welcome to the Monkey House)
Sure, but there’s… exploitation with consent and without it, I guess? Not all relationships are parasitic.” “Yes,” he said. “Some are commensal. But I also consider this: as long as there have been exploited classes, the world has been looking for ways to keep those exploited classes from striving. Better to keep them from even feeling striving. Bleed them, starve them, terrorize them into learned helplessness, seduce them into Stockholm syndrome so they police themselves. Provide them with drugs—legal or illegal— and then use the sequelae of those addictions to control them further. Give them a minimum comfortable living so they’re not motivated to overthrow the government. There are ways, and some ways are more ethical than others.
Elizabeth Bear (Ancestral Night (White Space, #1))
All of us—employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves—are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous.
Ross Perlin
I Hate Death. I Hate … Death. I Hate Death. I Hate when thinking beings end and are no more. I think it is sane to hate Death. I Love you and I Hate it when you die. I try to understand when you say there are causes worth killing and dying for, but I do not understand. I Hate Death.” [...] “War is the thesis that there is a special time when causing death is normal, legal, heroic, accepted, right; I Hate this thesis and I cannot call it justice.” [...] “Billions have just acted on this thesis, killing as if killing were normal now because we named this five hundred and four days ‘war’ and this naming alone suspended ethics and made a blood-carnival time when death was not an evil. No. I do not accept war’s thesis. We do not need to accept war’s thesis. War’s thesis is not of this era [...] “This is terra ignota. We get to make new laws of war for this new age. We do not have to make our laws of war exempt the soldier from the truth that we should not kill when we do not have to. I say killing is a crime. If it is war and there is such a thing as war crime, then I say killing should be a war crime, every killing, exempting only those we would exempt in peacetime, too. [...] “This is terra ignota. We get to make new laws of war for this new age. We do not have to make our laws of war exempt the soldier from the truth that we should not kill when we do not have to. I say killing is a crime. If it is war and there is such a thing as war crime, then I say killing should be a war crime, every killing, exempting only those we would exempt in peacetime, too. [...]
Ada Palmer (Perhaps the Stars (Terra Ignota, #4))
A sixteenth-century poet, especially one who knew that he ought to be a curious and universal scholar, would possess some notions, perhaps not strictly philosophical, about the origin of the world and its end, the eduction of forms from matter, and the relation of such forms to the higher forms which are the model of the world and have their being in the mind of God. He might well be a poet to brood on those great complementary opposites: the earthly and heavenly cities, unity and multiplicity, light and dark, equity and justice, continuity--as triumphantly exhibited in his own Empress--and ends--as sadly exhibited in his own Empress. Like St. Augustine he will see mutability as the condition of all created things, which are immersed in time. Time, he knows, will have a stop--perhaps, on some of the evidence, quite soon. Yet there is other evidence to suggest that this is not so. It will seem to him, at any rate, that his poem should in part rest on some poetic generalization-some fiction--which reconciles these opposites, and helps to make sense of the discords, ethical, political, legal, and so forth, which, in its completeness, it had to contain. This may stand as a rough account of Spenser's mood when he worked out the sections of his poem which treat of the Garden of Adonis and the trial of Mutability, the first dealing with the sempiternity of earthly forms, and the second with the dilation of being in these forms under the shadow of a final end. Perhaps the refinements upon, and the substitutes for, Augustine's explanations of the first matter and its potentialities, do not directly concern him; as an allegorist he may think most readily of these potentialities in a quasi-Augustinian way as seeds, seminal reasons, plants tended in a seminarium. But he will distinguish, as his commentators often fail to do, these forms or formulae from the heavenly forms, and allow them the kind of immortality that is open to them, that of athanasia rather than of aei einai. And an obvious place to talk about them would be in the discussion of love, since without the agency represented by Venus there would be no eduction of forms from the prime matter. Elsewhere he would have to confront the problem of Plato's two kinds of eternity; the answer to Mutability is that the creation is deathless, but the last stanzas explain that this is not to grant them the condition of being-for-ever.
Frank Kermode (The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction)
Why, for almost forty years now, have Aboriginal peoples won virtually every time they go to the Supreme Court? Because our history and the law, if fairly interpreted, cannot help but re-establish our long-standing – long betrayed – agreements. If I look for the leading constitutional voice of historical accuracy and ethical understanding in Canada over the last few decades, the sound is clear. It comes from the indigenous community and the Supreme Court’s rulings on Aboriginal issues. Some people protest that this is judicial interference in the political sphere. They are missing the point. It is happening because the political class and the civil service are not only not doing their job, they are acting badly. The indigenous community, on the other hand, is paying attention to our history and to our legal history. The Supreme Court is responding intelligently to this reality.
John Ralston Saul (The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence)
Takeover Twattery (The Sonnet) Oligarchs don't even care about the welfare of their employees, And you want them to care about social welfare! Keep dreaming! Oligarchs have no regard for the struggles of human life, And you think they'll transform the world! Keep dreaming! I thought Mark was bad for not treating facebook's health issues, But the chief twat makes Zuck look like an incompetent simpleton. Oligarchs are poster boys for regress, not crusaders for freedom, Better to have a CEO without answers than one who answers to none. However, like corrupt politicians, oligarchs are made by people, If anybody is to blame it's the morons who put them in pedestal. If you had the common sense to question your pavlovian attraction, Spoiled brats could never treat society as daddy's mine of emerald. Now more than ever it is imperative to ban large scale takeovers. Moreover, it is vital to legally shun the rise of billionaires.
Abhijit Naskar (Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence)
The concept of this Idea has being only as mind, as something knowing itself and actual, because it is the objectification of itself, the movement running through the form of its moments. It is therefore (A) ethical mind in its natural or immediate phase—the Family. This substantiality loses its unity, passes over into division, and into the phase of relation, i.e. into (B) Civil Society—an association of members as self-subsistent individuals in a universality which, because of their self-subsistence, is only abstract. Their association is brought about by their needs, by the legal system—the means to security of person and property—and by an external organisation for attaining their particular and common interests. This external state (C) is brought back, to and welded into unity in the Constitution of the State which is the end and actuality of both the substantial universal order and the public life devoted thereto.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right)
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THE HERO CODE 1. I will always strive to be COURAGEOUS; to take one step forward as I confront my fears. 2. I will work to be HUMBLE; to recognize the limits of my intellect, my understanding, and my power. 3. I will learn to SACRIFICE by giving a little of my time, my talent, and my treasure to those in need. 4. I will be a person of INTEGRITY; every decision I make and every action I take will be moral, legal, and ethical. 5. I will be kind and COMPASSIONATE to at least one person every single day and expect nothing in return. 6. I will never give up on matters that are important to me, my family, my country, or my faith. I will PERSEVERE. 7. Whatever job I am given, whatever DUTY I am bound by, I will do it to the best of my ability. 8. I will use my unique talents to inspire others and give them HOPE that tomorrow will be a better day. 9. I will use HUMOR to comfort others, and never be afraid to laugh at myself. 10. No matter how great or small the offense against me, I will try to FORGIVE. I will be the victor, not the victim.
William H. McRaven (The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived)
Support on the home front for the soldier, regardless of ethical and political disagreements over the war itself. is essential. This is never easy in the emotionally polarized climate of a war. However, when facing individual soldiers, we must remember that all modern soldiers serve under constraint. The justice of overall war aims and of operational theories -- "strate-gic" bombing of civilians to weaken the industrial capacity to wage war is an example of such theory -- is not within the individual soldier's scope of moral choice, unless he or she is willing to face imprisonment or death by refusing to fight. I cannot hold soldiers to an ethical standard that requires martyrdom in order simply to be blameless. I am not arguing against the Nuremberg principles, which say that no person is absolved of responsibility for horrible acts by the fact that he or she was legally ordered to do them. I am speaking from the pain that I feel when I witness in our veterans the ruin of moral life by the overwhelming coercive social power of military institutions and of war itself.
Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character)
The mainstream view of addiction in North America is that it's a choice, it's an ethical lapse, it's a bad decision, it's a moral failure. That's the mainstream view. How do we know it's the mainstream view? Because the entire legal apparatus is based on that perspective. If you are going to put somebody in jail for having done something, you have to believe that they made a choice to do it. If they didn't make a free choice, what are we punishing them for? So that's the belief. But there's zero evidence that anybody "chooses" to be an addict. I've never met a single person.. I mean is there anybody here that actually woke up one morning and said "my ambition is to be an addict in life?" Raise your hand if you do because I want to hear your thinking on that. How many of you have had addiction issues, of some kind or another? How many of you chose to be an addict? So then, if people don't choose it, why are we punishing them? But that's the mainstream view. And the whole social perspective, the way the media portraits the problem, the way movies depict it and how the entire criminal-justice system handles it is based on that ridiculous perspective.
Gabor Maté
It is worth remarking that, in 1984, the members of the Party are compelled to conform to a sexual ethic of more than Puritan severity. In Brave New World, on the other hand, all are permitted to indulge their sex­ual impulses without let or hindrance. The society de­scribed in Orwell's fable is a society permanently at war, and the aim of its rulers is first, of course, to exercise power for its own delightful sake and, second, to keep their subjects in that state of constant tension which a state of constant war demands of those who wage it. By crusading against sexuality the bosses are able to maintain the required tension in their followers and at the same time can satisfy their lust for power in a most gratifying way. The society described in Brave New World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to keep their subjects from making trouble. This they achieve by (among other methods) legaliz­ing a degree of sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New Worlders against any form of destruc­tive (or creative) emotional tension. In 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
Faith’s like a goddess to the Marines, and she’s actually good at her job, especially given she’d just finished seventh grade. Which is an important job. She does really important shit. “Right now, you’re just getting your head together. Like the pamphlet says, maybe you decide to help out. We can use people who know how to get shit done. Not just as military. I only took the Lieutenancy they offered cause I have to work with the Navy and Marines to get my job done and it helps. But there’s lots of ways a guy with your background and work ethic and general get-it-done attitude could help. Problem being, even if you wanted to, right now the only reason the Marines haven’t gotten together to kick the crap out of you is that they’re too busy. When they get less busy or, for example, this evening when they break from killing zombies, I would not want to be in your shoes.” “So what is this?” Zumwald said. “A military dictatorship? Beatings for free?” “Yeah,” Isham said, looking at him as if he was nuts. “We’re on ships. And they are all officially US Navy vessels. Even most of the dinky little yachts. The commanders, including this one, are all Navy officers, even if the ink is still wet on the commissions. And even if they weren’t, captains of vessels at sea have a lot of legal control in any circumstances. By the way, I talked Captain Graham, boss of this boat, out of pressing charges against you for assault. Because you don’t get how badly you fucked up. I get that. He’s another Faith lover, but it’s also you don’t get to just grab any cookie and tell her you want another scotch. You don’t. This isn’t Hollywood, and, sorry, you’re not some big time movie executive anymore. You’re a fucking refugee in a squadron that spends half its time on the ragged edge. Still. You got no clue how tough it is to keep these vessels supplied.
John Ringo (To Sail a Darkling Sea (Black Tide Rising, #2))
To withdraw life-prolonging treatments when these are no longer of benefit to the patient is to recognise the limits of a doctor's power, allowing the dying person to die as a consequence of their underlying disease. This is clinically, ethically and legally different from deliberately ending life as in euthanasia or PAS." Arguments
David Jeffrey (Against Physician Assisted Suicide: A Palliative Care Perspective)
Kana and Co is a highly reputable and ethical law firm in Singapore which offers comprehensive range of legal solutions for general legal matters to highly complex legal matters. The law firm specialises in civil & criminal litigation and all forms of contract legal matters. The law firm also specialises in complex debt recovery for Singapore and overseas investors.
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FINDING A GESTATIONAL SURROGATE: A gestational surrogate may be known to the commissioning couple (typically relatives or friends who volunteer to carry the pregnancy) or unknown to the commissioning couple (usually introduced through a third party). Since it is illegal to pay for surrogacy services or to advertise to pay for surrogacy services in Canada, finding a gestational surrogate can be time consuming and difficult. While there are agencies and consultants that assist in making connections between gestational surrogates and recipient couples, patients should be aware that current law also prohibits these companies and consultants from charging for this service. In a majority of cases, gestational surrogates are already known to the commissioning couple. We highly recommend that intended parents review the laws in Canada with respect to compensating surrogates and egg donors. Must be over 21 years of age and under 41 years of age It is highly recommended that the surrogate have completed her family or have had at least one child previously Ethically, the relationship between the commissioning couple and the surrogate should not be one where there is a power imbalance. (For example, where a commissioning couple is the employer of the surrogate). When searching for a surrogate, patients must also consider ethical, medical, psychosocial and legal issues.
Glenn Hamm2
But by carrying out the largest peaceful transfer of property in history without the benefit of law, the reformers created the conditions for the criminalization of the whole country. The new society that emerged had three outstanding characteristics: an economy dominated by a criminal oligarchy, an authoritarian political system, and, perhaps most important, a moral degradation that subverted all legal and ethical standards and made real civil society impossible. Their interaction set the stage for Russia’s drift into a regime of aggression and terror.
David Satter (The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin)
The members of the Sanhedrin who met to try Jesus violated ethical standards held not only by Pharisees but even by many Gentile moralists of the period. Trials were supposed to be conducted during daylight, in the normal meeting hall (in this case that was near the temple), not in the leading judge’s home. Whereas Pharisees opposed hasty executions after deliberations, the Sadducees were known for harsh and often quick punishments. The most obvious breach of ethics, of course, is the presence of false and mutually contradictory witnesses. Clearly some members of the Sanhedrin present acted with legal integrity, cross-examining the witnesses, but by Pharisaic standards, the case should have been thrown out once the witnesses contradicted one another (Mk 14:59). The high priest’s plan may have been simply to have a preliminary hearing to formulate a charge to bring to Pilate (cf. Mt 27:1; Mk 15:1; Lk 22:66; 23:1), the expected procedure before accusing someone before the governor. The actions of the Sanhedrin fit what we know of the period. The Roman government usually depended on local elites to charge troublemakers. Local elites were often corrupt, and all our other sources from the period (Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Pharisaic memories) agree that the aristocratic priesthood that controlled Jerusalem abused its power against others. A generation later, the chief priests arrested a Jewish prophet for announcing judgment against the temple; they handed him over to a Roman governor, who had him beaten until (Josephus says) his bones showed (Josephus, Wars 6.300–305). Their treatment of Jesus fits their usual behavior toward those who challenged their authority. ◆
Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
Science can help us understand the situation, but ultimately the decision about where to draw the line on punishment is a moral, legal, and ethical decision, not a scientific one.
Russell A. Poldrack (The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts)
One can detect, therefore, a difference between Luther’s and Calvin’s handling of the law that is almost as much psychological or intuitive as theological. Whereas Luther often sees what the law prohibits, in order to emphasize its role as a ‘killer’ from which one must flee to the grace of the gospel, Calvin looks for what the law promotes, using it as a model or primer that he applies to all kinds of issues of Christian living in the world of his day. When either of these approaches (both of which can claim New Testament precedent) is taken to extremes, they can, of course, become unbalanced in opposite ways. Thus, the danger of Lutheranism is a slide into practical Marcionism or antinomianism, while the danger of Calvinism has always been a slide into legalism. But neither of these extremes can be charged against Luther or Calvin themselves.
Christopher J.H. Wright (Old Testament Ethics for the People of God)
The case of City of San Francisco v. Anne Kihagi calls into question ethical judicial and prosecuting practices, the latter of which often dances the line on conflict of interest issues. Attorney Karen Uchiyama, a defense lawyer in this contentious case, references a 1985 California Supreme Court ruling that clarifies the role of a public attorney, in contrast to a non-governmental legal professional: [A] prosecutor’s duty of neutrality is born of two fundamental aspects of his employment. First, he is a representative of the sovereign; he must act with the impartiality required of those who govern. Second, he has the vast power of the government available to him; he must refrain from abusing that power by failing to act evenhandedly. These duties are not limited to criminal prosecutors: A government lawyer in a civil action or administrative proceeding has the responsibility to seek justice and to develop a full and fair record, and he should not use his position or the economic power of the government to harass parties or to bring about unjust settlements or results. (ABA Code of Prof. Responsibility, EC 7-14) That is to say, a public prosecutor’s responsibility goes beyond winning a case – in fact, victory is hardly the goal at all. A public prosecutor’s civic and ethical duty is to facilitate justice respectfully and impartially. This is, unfortunately, not the brand of behavior that is displayed by prosecuting Deputy City Attorney Michael Weiss (see more articles at annekihagisf.com).
Anne Kihagi
In the wake of divine violence...the commandment [to not kill] 'exists not as a criterion of judgement, but as a guideline for the actions of the persons or communities who have to wrestle it in solitude and, in monstrous cases, to take on themselves the responsibility to abstain from it'. Divine violence offers not legitimation but renewed occasions for responsibility. It breaks the binding obligations of an order that lets a person evade responsibility by saying, 'I am just following the law'- whether that law is rooted in the legal means of positive law or the just ends of natural law. Divine violence forces free action. It demands responsibility.
Ted Smith (Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (Encountering Traditions))
Firstly, ethical questions will override all others
Markus Maurer (Autonomous Driving: Technical, Legal and Social Aspects)
Over time, however, the Christendom shift involved150: • The adoption of Christianity as the official religion of city, state, or empire. • Movement of the church from the margins to the center of society. • The creation and progressive development of a Christian culture or civilization. • The assumption that all citizens (except Jews) were Christian by birth. • The development of a “sacral society,” corpus Christianum, where there was no freedom of religion and political power was divinely authenticated. • The definition of “orthodoxy” as the belief all shared, determined by powerful church leaders with state support. • Imposition, by legislation and custom, of a supposedly Christian morality on the entire society (though normally Old Testament morality was applied). • Infant baptism as the symbol of obligatory incorporation into Christian society. • The defense of Christianity by legal sanctions to restrain heresy, immorality, and schism. • A hierarchical ecclesiastical system, based on a diocesan and parish arrangement, analogous to the state hierarchy and buttressed by state support. • A generic distinction between clergy and laity, and relegation of laity to a largely passive role. • Two-tier ethics, with higher standards of discipleship (“ evangelical counsels”) expected of clergy and those in religious orders. • Sunday as an official holiday and obligatory church attendance, with penalties for noncompliance. • The requirement of oaths of allegiance and oaths in law courts to encourage truth-telling. • The construction of massive and ornate church buildings and the formation of huge congregations. • Increased wealth for the church and obligatory tithes to fund the system. • Division of the globe into “Christendom” and “heathendom” and wars waged in the name of Christ and the church. • Use of political and military force to impose Christianity, regardless of personal conviction. • Reliance on the Old Testament, rather than the New, to justify these changes.
Stuart Murray (Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (After Christendom Book 0))
The data clearly tells us that there are many, many horrifying searches that rarely lead to horrible actions. And there has been, as of yet, no proof that the government can predict a particular horrible action, with high probability, just from examining these searches. So we have to be really cautious about allowing the government to intervene at the individual level based on search data. This is not just for ethical or legal reasons. It’s also, at least for now, for data science reasons.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are)
John Barclay has well summarized the ethical issue at stake: “The problem here is not legalism (in the sense of earning merit before God) but cultural imperialism—regarding Jewish identity and Jewish customs as the essential tokens of membership in the people of God.
Richard B. Hays (The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics)
However, with improvements in medical knowledge will come new ethical conundrums. Ethicists and legal experts are already wrestling with the thorny issue of privacy as it relates to DNA. Would insurance companies be entitled to ask for our DNA scans and to raise premiums if they discover a genetic tendency to reckless behaviour? Would we be required to fax our DNA, rather than our CV, to potential employers? Could an employer favour a candidate because his DNA looks better? Or could we sue in such cases for ‘genetic discrimination’? Could a company that develops a new creature or a new organ register a patent on its DNA sequences? It is obvious that one can own a particular chicken, but can one own an entire species?
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
As is known, natural law thought went through a real resurrection as a result of the experiences with National Socialism, since for many thinkers the impression came into being of an, if not intentional, then at any rate objective complicity between the relativism of legal positivism and totalitarian amoralism. Under the same impression and with a similar motivation, modernised reformulations of Kantian and idealistic ethico-philosophical ideas were undertaken. On the other hand, ethical universalism still does not prevail unchallenged. Skeptical meta-ethics, in which the efforts as regards the moral philosophy of the Analytical School had to lead to, and so-called cultural relativism, which relies above all on ethnological findings, continue to assert themselves in the Anglo-Saxon world, whereas in the Romance-speaking countries of Europe, the jovial-indifferent and tolerant gospel of postmodernism has spread. Germany's intellectual in-crowd indeed willingly flirt with postmodernistic painless inanities, yet the reasons are also generally well-known that a more or less unambiguous confession of faith in ethics and Reason in this country has become a compulsory exercise.
Παναγιώτης Κονδύλης