Perfectly Legal, But Wrong

When “perfectly legal” is a lame excuse for doing the wrong thing

Emotional Support Animals, Airlines, and Ethics

Emotional Support Animals, Airlines, and Ethics

It was spring quarter at the University of Denver in 2008. I was giving a final exam in a freshman-level law and ethics class at the Daniels College of Business. I was taken aback when two women entered the classroom with small dogs. In over twenty years of teaching,...

Incivility: How deep does it go?

Incivility: How deep does it go?

Can’t anyone be “civil” anymore? From shout radio to the talking heads who –– for many years now ––interrupt each other on television “talk shows,” civility seems radically out of fashion, When then-candidate Donald Trump led chants of “Lock her up” or railed against...

Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works.
We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of a hat while everybody sits around wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naïve enough to think that we’re living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It’s the free market, and you’re part of it.
— Gordon Gecko, Wall Street

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“Clean Hands and the CEO:” Equity as an Antidote for Excessive Compensation

At the top of the corporate pyramid sits the chief executive officer (“CEO”). Along with the board of directors, the CEO is primarily responsible for the success of the company. When companies fail due to a breakdown in governance or financial misconduct, shareholders lose. Other stakeholders lose as well, including competitors, employees, and ultimately the public at large.

China’s Export Restrictions of Raw Materials and Rare Earths: A New Balance Between Free Trade and Environmental Protection?

China’s Export Restrictions of Raw Materials and Rare Earths: A New Balance Between Free Trade and Environmental Protection?

The legal issues that arise in both China – Raw Materials and China’s export restrictions of REE are significant for WTO jurisprudence because they address long-standing tensions between free trade and environmental protection. This Article discusses the Raw Materials Appellate Body’s analysis of the environmental and conservation defenses China raised under GATT 1994 Articles XI, XX(b), and XX(g).

Don Mayer is a writer who teaches law, ethics and sustainability at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. This forum is for all who are interested in the sometimes crazy space between what is ethical (or “right”) and what is “perfectly legal.”  You are welcome to subscribe to our monthly newsletter for the latest conflicts between what is legal and what is ethical.

Why “Perfectly Legal but Wrong?!”
Have you ever done a double take when someone explains, “Well, it’s perfectly legal.” I have. You might wonder, as well. This blog is all about the many conflicts between what is legal, and what is right.

People do seem to use the “it’s legal” excuse when something they do raises doubt about their moral bearings. Adding “perfectly” doesn’t do much more. If it’s legal, fine, but nothing is more “perfectly legal” than any other act that is legal. In fact, the use of “perfectly” often looks like a kind of fig leaf to cover the fact that someone is taking advantage of a loophole of some kind, or that the law just hasn’t caught up to that particular dubious practice.

In 2003, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston wrote “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich–and Cheat Everybody Else.” The title tells it all: the U.S. public treasury is being systematically deprived of revenue by the so-called “super rich,” a slice of the 1% that has the most to gain by influencing the tax laws. The Panama Papers revealed that wealthy folks all over the world are evading taxes; while you might conclude they are “smart” on the basis that government is so bad it needs to be starved of revenue, but others (such as Johnston) would also regard them as shirking duties of citizenship and community.

In short, just because a practice is legal, doesn’t make it right. Opponents of abortion have known and acted on this for years. On the other side of the political spectrum, gun control advocates say that just because a mentally challenged young man can legally buy an AR-15 without a background check doesn’t make it “right.” Although in many places in the U.S., both abortions and unchecked purchases of assault weapons are, as some would say, “perfectly legal.”

People and businesses get into trouble all the time not knowing the difference between what they have a right to do and what is right to do. In 2018, United Airlines employees decided it was “right” to call security when a seated passenger refused to give up his seat on an overbooked flight. They had a right to do so, but the inevitable iPhone videos of the man being dragged forcibly off the plane struck most observers as horribly wrong.

At a Philadelphia Starbucks, company policy was enforced to call police to arrest “trespassing” customers: African Americans waiting for a third party and asking for a bathroom key without having purchased anything. The manager had the right to do so, and the police did come, and the two men were taken to jail. But again, having the right to do something under the law doesn’t always make it “the right thing to do,” and Starbucks soon found itself in a public relations nightmare. Even it’s efforts to help drew criticism: While it was legal to shut down all Starbucks for an afternoon and require all employees to attend a racial sensitivity training session, some regarded doing so as too “politically correct” to be truly correct.

Morality or ethics (and this site will use the terms as roughly equivalent) is tricky business. What seems right to one (having an abortion, calling the police on customers who don’t abide by company policy, avoiding taxes entirely) can seem clearly wrong to others. The legality (perfect or imperfect) becomes much beside the point.

This blog, and its fortnightly newsletter, will keep you up to date on the puzzling interactions between the law as written, and the morality of many individual, corporation, and governmental acts. No person, firm, or institution is without varying degrees of moral blindness, as we shall see, and in finding these ongoing situations we may just discern what is “most right,” or “most ethical.” It promises to be a fun –– though often strange –– journey.

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