The Relationship between Lawfulness and Ethics: Preliminary Remarks
It is quite interesting – and perhaps surprising – that ethical and legal may be considered as opposite terms (MacKinnon and Fiala 2015; Lyons 1984).
If one looks at the origin of the legal phenomenon, in fact, there is a strict link with ethics (which, in the past, was expressed in the belief of the divine origin and legitimacy of sovereign power).
Anyway, there is clearly at least one main difference between what is legal and what is ethical. The concept of ethical has always to do with a voluntary choice of a person, according to his/her perception of good and evil (Huberts 2014). If something is legal, instead, this means that a decision has been taken by the lawmakers, in light of evaluations which are not (and could not be) individual, but must reflect a collective dimension.
An open issue regards the possible existence of a theoretical bi-univocal correspondence between ethics and law. In principle, as already...
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Simonati, A. (2017). Legal Vs. Ethical. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3091-1
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