Developing and using cases to teach practical ethics

Teaching Philosophy

Volumn 20, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 353-385

  Davis, Michael ^a  

^a ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 1642419339     PISSN: 01455788     EISSN: 21536619     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/teachphil199720445     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. see Bruce A. Kimball, The Emergence of Case Method Teach, 1872-1990s: A Search for Legitimate Pedagogy (The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, Indiana University: Bloomington, April, 1995). For a sampling of the vast literature on case method in business
2. see Hans E. Klein, ed., Case Method Research and Case Method Applications: Selected Papers of the Sixth International Conference on Case Method Research and Case Method Applications (Bentley College: Waltham, MA, May 22-24, 1989).
3. See, especially, Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)
4. John D. Arras, "Getting Down to Cases: The Revival of Casuistry in Bioethics," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 29-51
5. Christopher Miles Coope, "Does teaching cases mislead us about morality?", Journal of Medical Ethics 22 (1996): 46-52.
6. John B. Matthews, Kenneth E. Goodpaster, and Laura L. Nash, Policies and Persons: A Casebook in Business Ethics, 2nd. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), pp. 1-7
7. Tom L. Beauchamp, Case Studies in Business, Society, and Ethics, 3rd. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), pp. 1-13
8. Charles E. Harris, Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael J. Rabins, Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), pp. 125-144.
9. Indeed, there is little more than the few remarks in Caroline Whitbeck's "Teaching Ethics to Scientists and Engineers: Moral Agents and Moral Problems," Science and Engineering Ethics 1 (July 1995): 299-308.
10. see William P. LaPiana, Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern American Legal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 132-147.
11. See, for example, Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science, v. 1′, edited and with forward by James Bryant Conant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).
12. see Michael Davis, "The Ethics Boom: What and Why," Centennial Review 34 (Spring 1990): 163-186
13. Stephen Toulmin, "How Medicine Saved Ethics," in New Directions in Ethics, edited by Joseph P. DeMarco (New York: Routledge, 1986), pp. 265-281.
14. See, for example, the "famous violinist" in Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (Fall 1971): 47-66.
15. While physicians seem to have used medical cases (both living patients and published reports) for teaching centuries before Harvard's law school coined the term "case method," physicians cannot claim to have invented the case method (any more than they can claim to have coined the term). Until the last few decades, physicians did not use cases as the standard method of instruction. Instead, they relied primarily on lecture, textbook, and laboratory, reserving the study of cases for the last stage of medical education, that is, for clinical training just before or after the M.D. There is, however, some connection between the physician's use of clinical cases and the law school's case method, an analogy which (along with the scientific laboratory) seems to appear regularly in early defenses of the method.
16. What connection is there between the lawyer's use of "case" and the physician's? Probably no more than etymology. A case is literally a box, file, or other container-and, by extension, whatever it holds. No doubt both lawyers and physicians kept records of their work, organized by the individual served and then by the individual's problem, in containers of some sort, that is, in "cases." Hence, it would be only natural for both lawyers and physicians to refer to one of these records-and, by extension, to the events it described-as "a case."
17. Michael Davis and Frederick A. Elliston, eds., Ethics and the Legal Profession (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986).
18. See, for example, J. Kenneth Matejka and Thomas J. Cosse, The Business Case Method: An Introduction (Richmond, VA: Robert F. Dame, Inc., 1981), especially the fourteen questions "students may have," pp. 39-48
19. Tom L. Beauchamp's casebook, Case Studies in Business, Society, and Ethics, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), with the relatively short cases in the anthology which he edited with Norman Bowie, Ethical Theory and Business, 4th ed. (Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993).
20. Lon Fuller, "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers," Harvard Law Review 62 (February 1949): 616-645.
21. see Paula Wells, Hardy Jones, and Michael Davis, Conflict of Interest in Engineering (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1986).
22. This rule is, I am afraid, only formally true. Some stories, though they can be turned into problems (in a sense), cannot be turned into problems successfully. In famous cases, students may recognize the story behind the problem, adding the ending themselves. The problem will then behave exactly like a story.
23. Whitbeck, 300: "The judgments offered as responses to intellectual puzzles are ... just the 'kibitzing' of a critical spectator."
24. Compare Whitbeck, 302: "Of course, the best problem is an actual problem that a student is experiencing ... Problem statements may, if carefully crafted, simulate many features of an actual ethical problem however." The best problem is an actual problem only if all else is equal, that is, if the problem is on the right subject, does not involve too much risk, is of manageable size, and so on. Generally, all else is far from equal. Whitbeck is, I think, in effect wishing the classroom were the clinic.
25. See, for example, Muriel Bebeau, "Designing an Outcome-Based Ethics Curriculum on Moral Reasoning: Strategies and Evidence of Effectiveness," Journal of Moral Education 22 (1993): 313-326
26. Muriel Bebeau, "The Impact of a Dental Ethics Curriculum on Moral Reasoning," Journal of Dental Education 58 (September, 1994): 684-692.
27. see Michael S. Pritchard, ed., Teaching Engineering Ethics: A Case Study Approach (Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, Western Michigan University: Kalamazoo, June 15, 1992). Pritchard's suggestions on how to use his cases, pp. 1-22, include several useful insights into the case method.
28. Based on a case developed in P. Aarne Vesilund, Introduction to Environmental Engineering (Boston: PWS Publishing Co., 1997).
29. See, for example, William P. LaPiana, Logic and Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 48.
30. Law professors will, of course, profess ignorance of what the courts will do. Generally, however, they do not profess ignorance of what the courts have done. They will often point out trends and, based on them, make predictions. They will even offer (what they will describe as) "the better view" on some controversial legal question. The better view (that is, the view they hold) may or may not be the "majority view" (the view of a majority of courts or scholars).
31. Business professors generally do not employ the sarcastic method. Business does not reward the lawyer's hardness. The business school's version of hardness is a kind of calculated self-serving.
32. See, for example, Moshe M. Blatt and Lawrence Kohlberg, "The Effects of Classroom Moral Discussion Upon Children's Level of Moral Judgment," Journal of Moral Education 4 (1975): 129-161
33. Robert M Liebert, "What Develops in Moral Development?", in Morality, Moral Behavior, and Moral Judgment, William M. Kurtines and Jacob L. Gewirtz, eds. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984), pp. 177-192.
34. see Philip E. Davis, ed., Moral Duty and Legal Responsibility (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966).
35. A course can, of course, be a mixture of theoretical and practical ethics. And, indeed, in practice many "baby ethics" courses (such as Moral and Social Values) are. Such a mixed course may mix theoretical with practical uses of cases. The distinction made here may nonetheless be useful for understanding what an instructor in such a course is doing with a case at any moment.
36. While social-issues courses do reach some issues belonging to political philosophy or political theory, they generally stay closer to questions of ethics ("how we should act") rather than political philosophy ("what government should do"). Social-issues courses are more likely to become a hybrid of philosophical ethics and practical ethics than of political philosophy and practical ethics.
37. Though such courses generally transmit a good deal of information (for example, how abortions are performed, how often, and by whom) and may also increase student willingness to act on what they believe to be right, the courses do not generally have either of these accomplishments among their stated purpose.
38. See Blatt and Kohlberg.
39. Compare Whitbeck, 306-307.
40. see Donn B. Parker, Susan Swope, and Dr. Bruce N. Baker, Ethical Conflicts: Information and Computer Science, Technology, and Business (Wellesley, MA: QED Information Sciences, Inc., 1990). I owe this reference to Jack Snapper.
41. see "Ethics Bowl at Annual Meeting," Speaking Ethically 5 (Summer/Fall 1996): 4, or contract the inventor, Robert Ladenson, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616; phone 312-567-3474, fax 312-567-3016, or e-mail ladenson@ charlie.cns.iit.edu.