Ethical Analysis Toolkit: Definitions, Principles and Concepts

A large percentage of ethics discussions break down over disputes over definitions and the lack of common terms and concepts. This section contains some useful tools to permit analysis, discussion, and argument to go forward, and to provide a quick reference for readers when one or more of these appear in the Ethics Scoreboard.

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From Jack Marshall, President, ProEthics

The Ethics Scoreboard exists because, to be blunt, national media, academia, law, the arts, government, and the church have been timid, garbled, and worst of all, boring in their efforts (such as they are) to apply our society's ethical standards and principles to the daily events that bombard us. The results of this failure are apparent: a proliferation of ethics-related incidents, a lack of coherent discussion regarding them, and in too many cases, public apathy.

The Ethics Scoreboard intends to counter this environment by doing four things:

• Providing some simple tools for ethical analysis.
  
• Identifying current events and issues that raise important ethical issues
  
• Using those tools to make a straight-forward assessment of these
  
• Talking about them.

This site will not attempt to be exhaustive, but will focus on raising ethical issues and observations that are not appearing elsewhere.

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Suggest an item for the Scoreboard

Please send suggestions regarding issues, news stories, unethical web sites and other topics for discussion on The Ethics Scoreboard to ProEthics President

The Case of the Conflicted Prosecutor

Faced with being ordered by his superiors to prosecute two men who he had become convinced were innocent, Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Daniel L. Bibb “took a dive,” in prize fighting parlance. He lost their trial on purpose, in the interest of justice. Was he ethical?

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Also new this week: A new Dunce

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The Global Warming Series

• Global Warming Ethics: Part One of Three. Convenient Misrepresentations
  
  
• Global Warming Ethics, Part Two of Three: The Offset Illusion
  
  
• Global Warming Ethics, Part Three of Three: Ideology and Bias
  

The David Manning Liars of the Month

The fictional David Manning, a film critic invented by the Sony Corporation, stands for the dubious proposition that as long as your self-serving lie is in a trivial arena (usually entertainment) where dishonesty and misrepresentation are commonplace, or is a lie that nobody believes, it isn't reprehensible. All intentional public deceptions do harm, however, so The Ethics Scoreboard regularly recognizes The David Manning Liars of the Month, and urges the public to make them come clean…

Unethical/Ethical Website of the Month

From the Scoreboard's Founder
"The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow"

Edited and with an Introduction by
Edward J.Larson and Jack Marshall

The courtroom oratory, essays and speeches of America's greatest lawyer raise fascinating ethical and social issues, while giving us a window into one of the most provocative minds the nation ever produced.

"His debates over the death penalty and the nature of evil, the existence of the soul and the literal truth of the Bible -- these seem central to the way America still thinks about itself. "History repeats itself and that's one of the things that's wrong with history," Darrow wrote. This book makes the gnarly and theatrical litigator seem very much our contemporary."    ~ The Los Angeles Times

Buy "The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow" book at:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Random House
• Find an independent bookstore that carries this book at Booksense