Law, virtue, and the corporation

American Business Law Journal

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 473-487

  Nesteruk, Jeffrey ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 21344463720     PISSN: 00027766     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-1714.1996.tb00897.x     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. For some prominent examples of the work of such business ethicists, see ROBERT C. SOLOMON, ETHICS AND EXCELLENCE: COOPERATION AND INTEGRITY IN BUSINESS (1992); Edwin M. Hartman, The Commons and the Moral Organization, 4 BUS. ETHICS Q. 253 (1994); Bill M. Shaw, Virtues for a Postmodern World, 5 BUS. ETHICS Q. 843 (1995).
2. For some prominent examples of the work of such business ethicists, see ROBERT C. SOLOMON, ETHICS AND EXCELLENCE: COOPERATION AND INTEGRITY IN BUSINESS (1992); Edwin M. Hartman, The Commons and the Moral Organization, 4 BUS. ETHICS Q. 253 (1994); Bill M. Shaw, Virtues for a Postmodern World, 5 BUS. ETHICS Q. 843 (1995).
3. For some prominent examples of the work of such business ethicists, see ROBERT C. SOLOMON, ETHICS AND EXCELLENCE: COOPERATION AND INTEGRITY IN BUSINESS (1992); Edwin M. Hartman, The Commons and the Moral Organization, 4 BUS. ETHICS Q. 253 (1994); Bill M. Shaw, Virtues for a Postmodern World, 5 BUS. ETHICS Q. 843 (1995).
4. For an examination of this tradition, see ROBERT P. GEORGE, MAKING MEN MORAL: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PUBLIC MORALITY 21-28 (1993).
5. Id. at 20.
6. Id.
7. For a succinct account of this corporate law debate, see Symposium, New Directions in Corporate Law, 50 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1373 (1993).
8. See Hartman, supra note 1, at 259-60.
9. Hartman, supra note 1, at 260.
10. In developing his Aristotelian perspective, Robert Solomon notes, "All ethics is contextual, and one of the problems with all those grand theories is that they try to transcend context and end up with vacuity." Robert C. Solomon, An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics, in BUSINESS AS A HUMANITY 45, 58 (Thomas J. Donaldson & R. Edward Freeman eds., 1994).
11. Such legal alteration of the context of business transactions is commonplace. Consider, for instance, the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on corporate hiring. Through its legal mandates, the Act alters the context in which such hiring occurs so as to encourage a full and fair consideration of qualified job applicants with disabilities.
12. SOLOMON, supra note 1, at 197.
13. See U.S. CONST. art I, ∫ 2 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States ...."); U.S. CONST. amend. XVII ("The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years ...."); U.S. CONST. art. III, ∫ 1 ("The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour ....").
14. I take this term from Robert P. George. See GEORGE, supra note 2, at 14.
15. Id. at 25.
16. ARISTOTLE, NICOMACHEAN ETHICS bk. II, ch. 1, 1103b in THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE (Richard McKeon ed., 1941).
17. Id.
18. Id. at bk. IX, ch. 9, 1169b.
19. Id. at bk. IX, ch. 11, 1171a.
20. For a contemporary example of the obstacles to virtuous action in a particular community, see Alexander Filator, Unethical Behavior in Post-Communist Russia: Origins and Trends, 4 BUS. ETHICS Q. 11 (1994).
21. Hartman, supra note 1, at 257-58.
22. Hartman, supra note 1, at 260.
23. Robert C. Solomon, Corporate Roles. Personal Virtues: An Aristotelean Approach to Business Ethics, 2 BUS. ETHICS Q. 317, 325 (1992).
24. See David Millon, Communitarians. Contractarians, and the Crisis in Corporate Law, 50 WASH & LEE L. REV. 1373 (1993).
25. See id. at 1377-86.
26. Id. at 1377.
27. Id. at 1388.
28. Id. at 1379.
29. See, e.g., Jeffrey Nesteruk, Bellotti and the Question of Corporate Moral Agency, 1988 COLUM. BUS. L. REV. 683, 690-91.
30. See Ronald Duska, Whistleblowing and Employee Loyalty, in BUSINESS ETHICS: A PHILOSOPHICAL READER 551 (Thomas I. White ed., 1993).
31. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668, 684 (Mich. 1919).
32. Hartman, supra note 1, at 260.
33. Hartman, supra note 1, at 257.