ETHICS AND THE PROFESSIONAL

Kaplan University – LS501

Welcome! Welcome! I am very excited to have you here tonight and I am

pleased to see that you all have an interest in ethics.

My name is Jamie Davis Smith. I’ll give you a brief background of my professional experience so you know a little about my background. I practice employment law and my experience is largely in the appellate process, as I worked for several years handling appeals. I have also worked on trial-level cases. In addition, I have experience as a mediator mediating child protection cases. Before going to law school I worked as a paralegal and I have also supervised paralegals so hopefully I can give you some insight into what working as a paralegal will be like!

A little about my personal life, is that I live in Washington, DC with my husband and small children.

  Ok. That’s me. Now I would like to hear from each of you. Tell us

your name, where you live, what you hope to get out of this class, and one interesting thing about yourself!

Getting to Know You

Terrific. Welcome to all of you. Please post your introduction under “Meet Your Classmates” as well if you haven’t done so already. It’s another way we can get to know and learn a little more about one another!

  I will read each and every introduction, so please do post

an intro if you haven't already. Also, if anything you would like to share with the class comes up during the course of the term please feel free to post that under the cyber café on the course homepage. It can be anything at all – if you get a new job, exciting information about your children, or questions about the class that you would like one of your classmates to answer. That way we can all get to know each other better over the course of the term. You can also post your AIM names there if you would like to invite your classmates to chat with you when they see you are online. Is everyone okay with that?

Policies

Now, let’s spend a few moments discussing the logistics of the class. First, the seminars. You are required to attend the weekly seminar if you want your points each unit. The seminar will provide insights that the book may not offer and will allows us all to discuss issues that came up during the unit. It is also a great forum to ask questions about the unit. Also, I want all of you to be aware that simply logging in to the seminar is not sufficient to get full credit – I expect each of you to participate in seminar as well. If you cannot attend the seminar for any reason, you may submit written summary of the unit to get credit. However, I encourage you to attend and participate often.

  Also, I want to make sure you are aware that we are using a

moderated seminar format, which means that although I can see everything you type, your classmates cannot. This helps us cut down on chatter that is not related to the class. I will post some, but by no means all, comments for the entire class to see. If you do not see your comment posted, rest assured of two things. First, I have seen the comment. Second, your comment is valuable. Ok on seminars?

Policies

Good. Now, the discussion board. This is the segment of the course where you will interact with each other and with me about specific topics relevant to the unit. It is essential that you participate early and often each week. To receive full credit you must post three substantive comments over three separate days.

You may want to create a schedule for yourself so you don’t forget – such as posting every Wednesday, Saturday, and Tuesday. You may choose any three days that work best for you, but a good guideline to aim for is to post at least once before the weekend, once during the weekend, and once after the weekend. Is everyone clear?

Policies

I will respond to many, but not necessarily all of you each week on the DB; however, I read every comment, so please post thoughtful comments. Also, do not attack or unconstructively criticize your classmates – this is an open forum and serves as a learning experience. If you do not post or only post low quality comments by the end of the unit, you will be given a 0 and there is no makeup assignment available. Ok on the DB?

Policies

Assignments are always due at the end of the unit by Sunday, midnight, ET.

Assignments must be submitted through the drop box.

Assignments will be graded following the assignment instructions and grading rubric. The rubric is posted in doc sharing and should be reviewed carefully.

Policies

Finally, deadlines. All of us are busy. And all of us have unexpected things happen to us. I know from all of your introductions that you are all very busy, many of you with full-time jobs, large families, or both. That is why I keep this course as flexible as possible. My goal is to ensure that you learn the concepts you need to succeed in this field. However, I must abide by Kaplan’s policy on late submissions. If something prevents you from getting an assignment in on time, email me in advance and I will give you extra time. However, you will lose some points regardless of the situation. This is the tradeoff. I cannot justify giving the same credit to a late assignment as I do to those students that overcame their own circumstances to get their work in on time. You will always be able to hand in late work, but you will simply lose points. Does this seem fair to everyone?

Policies

I will try to reserve a few minutes at the end of each seminar to answer questions about anything at all related to the course, but you can always ask questions in seminars as they come up. That is all for housekeeping. Before we dive into the seminar for the evening, are there any questions on the course?

Final Project

Let’s begin by discussing the final project for the course, which is a 15-20 page research paper. We will begin thinking about the final project this week and selecting a topic. You should submit your topic to me by the end of the unit through the dropbox. I will provide you with feedback and approve your topic.

Please give your topic selection serious thought as you will

be building on it throughout the term. That said, I firmly believe that school should be as much fun as possible so please choose a topic that you will enjoy researching and writing about because you will be spending a lot of time exploring your topic. You may want to look ahead to the various topics we will be exploring this term to see which you find most interesting and for ideas. Any questions about your topic selection?

 

Final Project

Alright, we will discuss an aspect of the final project nearly every unit between now and when your final paper is due, by the end of unit nine. Of course, you should always feel free to ask me questions about the final project or anything else at any time via e-mail or under Ask the Prof on the course homepage. Any questions before we move on?

Assignment You also have an assignment due this week that involves an ethical scenario.

Remember that this is due by the end of Unit One, Tuesday at midnight ET. Here it is:

Consider again the "Betrayal" hypothetical: “Your client Jane is accused of her husband’s murder. An eye-witness who won’t be shaken on cross-examination mistakenly identifies Jane as the killer. Jane was at a hotel out of town at the time of the murder but paid in cash, didn’t sign the hotel register, and the clerk doesn’t remember seeing her.

Your state has the death penalty. Jane will be acquitted is if you forge her signature on the register. Putting forged documents into evidence is a felony. But it is the only way to save her. You do it.”

Assignment:Write a brief memo that translates and applies in simple language the major philosophical and ethical concepts identified in this unit, including:

Utilitarianism, Egoism, Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and Interpretations of the “Golden Rule” from Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam,

Buddhism, and Confucianism.

Any questions?

Ethics

Alright, let’s jump in! First, let’s distinguish between three types of ethics – Descriptive, Normative, and Metaethics.

What is descriptive ethics?

Ethics

Good! Descriptive ethics is simply the description of the ethical beliefs of a certain group of people.

Another way to put it is, “What do people think?” It’s matter of sociology or anthropology, not philosophy. One example might be “Eskimos believe it is right to leave their sick and old in the cold to die.”

Can you think of other examples of descriptive ethics?

Ethics

What is normative ethics?

Ethics

Right! Normative ethics attempts to answer substantive questions of right and wrong. In other words, what should people believe?

For example, determining whether insider trading really is morally permissible or impermissible -- not simply whether a particular group of people, such as Americans or Wall Street traders, thinks it is permissible or impermissible -- is an issue of normative ethics.

Normative ethics includes not just the discussion and analysis of particular moral questions but also the attempt to develop and defend a general theory of right and wrong.

What are some examples of normative ethical theories? 

Ethics

Good! Utilitarianism, Egoism, Kant’s Categorical Imperative are all examples of normative ethical theories. We will look at each in more detail in a moment, but first -

  Does anyone know what metaethics is?

Ethics

I didn’t expect many of you would know. This is a more abstract concept that we will not examine in this class, but you should be familiar with.

Metaethics deals with the nature and meaning of ethical language and the question of whether (or the extent to which) any particular normative theory can be justified.

In other words, metaethics asks “What is moral?” That is to say, while a normative theory provides an account of right and wrong, metaethics is the philosophical analysis of morality itself, independent of any substantive theory of right and wrong, focusing on the meaning and justification of moral statements.

Alright, let’s review our normative theories in a bit more detail. What is Egoism?

Ethics

Right! Very simply, egoism is the theory that we ought to do what is in our best interest.

What is Utilitarianism?

Ethics

Good! Utilitarianism is the theory that we ought to act in a way that will bring the greatest good to greatest number of people. Utilitarianism often refers to units as happiness.

One major distinction between these two theories is that egoism is very narrow because is focuses on the individual, whereas utilitarianism is very broad because it focuses on all those affected by performing the action or following a rule.

  But, these theories are similar because they are both

consequentialist theories. Does anyone recall what that means?

Ethics

Consequentialist theories dictate that we should act based on the consequences of our actions.

That is, an ethical action is one that results in a good outcome, or consequence.

Under these theories, might it be acceptable to steal to steel food to save yourself or others?

Ethics

It would be!  Okay, there is also a non-

consequentialist theory I would like to discuss - Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Can anyone tell us what this is?

Ethics

Good! There are several different ways to state Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but essentially Kant believed that we should act according to universal principals of what is good.

That is, we should act only in ways that we would accept as universal laws. And, additionally, we should always treat people as an ends to themselves and never as a means.

So, would Kant ever accept that it would be acceptable to steal, even to save the life of an infant?

Ethics

No. Kant would argue that one should never steal, no matter how justifiable it may be on other grounds, because we would not want stealing to become a universal norm.

Now, let’s briefly discuss the “Golden Rule.” There are two formulations of the golden rule.

One states “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The other states, “Do not do unto others as you would not have them unto you.” What do you see as the fundamental difference?

Ethics

The golden rule asking us not to do unto others as we would have them not do unto us, appears to create a much lesser duty: Only to avoid doing to others that which we would not like visited upon us. Essentially, this version of the rule only requires us not to treat others with malice, rather than to treat them well. Any questions?

Ethics

Alright, since this class is part of a program in legal studies and many of you are aspiring lawyers, let’s apply some of what we have learned in this unit to the role of attorneys.

I’m going to ask a question that may appear basic and then ask it again after our discussion. If a client tells an attorney that he plans on committing a crime do you think the attorney should be:

1. prohibited from revealing the client’s confidence, 2. permitted to call the police, or 3.required to do so?

Ethics

Good! What about if a client, Bob, tells you he is planning on kidnapping his own daughter, who is living with his ex-wife, Beth. Bob tells you that Beth regularly beats their child, but that his numerous complaints to child welfare have not resulted in any action being taken. Bob tells you that his daughter was just in the hospital again last night with a broken arm resulting from Beth yanking too hard to get her to go to bed. Bob wants the attorney’s opinion on the legal consequences of his actions.

What do you think the attorney’s ethical duty is here? There are no right or wrong answers!

 

Ethics

What if Bob has never tried calling child welfare, but is upset and is planning on taking his daughter to another state because he believes he is protecting her by doing so?

Would that change your mind?

Ethics

What if Beth is not harming the child, but Bob wants to take his daughter to another state to live with him because his daughter has expressed on numerous occasions that she would be happier living with Bob?

Ethics

Good discussion!

Can you think of an example where an attorney should be prohibited from revealing a client’s confidence?

Ethics

Can you think of an example where an attorney should be permitted to call the police?

  Can you think of an example where an

attorney should be required to call the police?

Ethics

Now, after exploring this issue a little further, have any of you changed your minds about whether an attorney should be prohibited from revealing a client’s confidences, should be permitted to call the police, or should be required to call the police if they know a client is planning on committing a crime? If so, why?

Ethics

Now, what would Kant say about Bob?

Ethics

Under Kant’s Categorical Imperative Kant would not believe that it was ethical for Bob to take his daughter under any circumstances, even if Beth were so abusive that the daughter’s life were in danger.

What would the consquentialists say?

Ethics

Very good! The consequentialists would look at each scenario and make their decision based on the outcome.

  Any questions?

Wrap-Up

That was a lot for our first seminar! I look forward to receiving your paper topics and first paper.

I look forward also to seeing you on the DB and in seminar next week!