Legal Standards and Ethical Norms: Defining the Limits of Conflicts Regulations

Abstract

Scrub him down while I go back for more: I planted a harvest of them in that city: Everyone there is a grafter except Bonturo. There “Yes” is “No” and “No” is “Yes” for a fee. Dante, The Divine Comedy , Inferno, XXI, 39–42 However, it is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: “Here I stand; I can do no other.” That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” (1919, 127). Introduction Conflict of interest and the relationship between legal and ethical standards have had a long tradition of being addressed through legal theory and its positivist practitioners (lawyers, judges, administrative bodies, etc.). Labels may change, but the core issues at stake have remained very similar throughout the centuries. These issues illuminate the two main weaknesses of the legal experience, weaknesses that stem from the law's reason for being. On the one hand, conflict of interest addresses the inevitable social dimension of law. As law cannot be conceived without a plurality of subjects, plurality of competing and conflicting interests is therefore a natural consequence.