Personal Conscience Research Articles

When the Lawyer Knows the Client is Guilty: David Mellinkoff's 'The Conscience of a Lawyer', Legal Ethics, Literature, and Popular Culture

David Mellinkoff's 1973 book 'The Conscience of a Lawyer' concerned a classic puzzle in legal ethics: what should a criminal defense lawyer do when the lawyer is certain that the client is factually guilty, but the client insists on an all-out defense? Mellinkoff focused on the Courvoisier case, a notorious English trial in 1840 in which defense counsel's tactics created an enormous public scandal. Legal ethicists have struggled with these issues ever since that time and they remain unresolved. This article draws a distinction between strong and weak adversarialism and explains how these two normative positions guide a lawyer's tactical decisionmaking in the certainly-guilty client situation. The article suggests that lawyers should have discretion to choose between the strong and weak positions, depending on context and their personal conscience. Both popular culture and great literature provide surprisingly interesting perspectives on the strong vs. weak adversarialism dilemma. Literature casts doubt on whether a lawyer can ever know with the requisite certainty whether a client is guilty. It presents numerous models of successful strong adversarialists and unsuccessful weak adversarialists. Few literary lawyers manage to be both skilled advocates and decent human beings. American popular culture, on the other hand, presents an emphatic answer to the question of what a lawyer with a certainly guilty client should do. According to pop culture, the lawyer's job is to betray the client to make sure the guilty criminal is convicted, dishonored, or killed. Pop culture's no-adversarialism model is a universe few lawyers would care to inhabit but which reflects popular views on the relationship of lawyering to truth.

Nurturing personal and professional conscience in an age of corporate globalisation: Bill Viola's The Passions

Nurturing personal and professional conscience in an age of corporate globalisation: Bill Viola's The Passions

Postscript for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada: Morgentaler vs. Professors Cook and Dickens

An article about the morning after pill by law professors RJ Cook and BM Dickens in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada elicited a protest from Dr. Howard Bright of Chilliwack, B.C. Dr. Bright contested their statement that physicians are obliged to refer for treatments to which they are morally opposed. “There is no obligation to refer,” he wrote, citing the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. Nonetheless, Cook and Dickens stuck to their claim. “Physicians who feel entitled to subordinate their patient’s desire for well-being to the service of their own personal morality or conscience,” they stated, “should not practise clinical medicine” The assertion that a patient’s desire should be an ordering principle in the practice of medicine has little to recommend it. More important, the arguments of Professors Cook and Dickens for mandatory referral are unsupported and even contradicted by their own legal and ethical references.

Infallible Apologies

Infallible Apologies James Warner Pope John Paul II issued nearly 100 apologies during his pontificate. He offered these statements on behalf of the Catholic Church for those who had sinned in its name, from the paedophilia of U.S. priests to the misdeeds of the church in its earliest days. Like the number of saints he canonized, this quantity of apologies was unprecedented and similarly drew on the supratemporal authority of the church to fortify its contemporary relevance. While most of these admissions of error attracted little attention, the 1992 lifting of the edict of Inquisition against Galileo Galilei and the sweeping Jubilee apology of 2000 attracted a great deal of publicity and revealed the contradictions of the papal mea culpa. In removing the edict against Galileo, the pope acted on the findings of an 11-year investigation that he had commissioned in 1981. Long preoccupied with the affair, the pope said at the time: From the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment down to our own day, the Galileo case has been a sort of "myth" . . . the symbol of the Church's supposed rejection of scientific progress, or of "dogmatic" obscurantism opposed to the free search for truth . . . in which the image fabricated out of the events was quite far removed from reality.1 John Paul II appears to have been motivated largely by a desire to clear the Church's name rather than to make amends with Galileo's memory. The pope's statement made no mention of the Inquisitors' treatment of the 69-year-old astronomer, which included a forced recantation under threat of torture and death and denial of medical care during his imprisonment. Instead, the pope had urged the commission to discover "the wrongs, from whatever side they may have come" and deemed the affair a "tragic mutual incomprehension" between Galileo and "theologians of that age," who could not reconcile heliocentrism and scripture. Since Galileo could deduce but not prove that the earth moved around the sun, the commission found that both parties had acted in good faith; to the pope, the investigation showed that a belief in the "fundamental opposition between science and faith . . . now belongs in the past." Strictly understood, it was less apology than apologia. Later, in 2000, the pope sought to "purify the memory" of the church in a grand public apology for all the sins committed in its name. Accompanied by five bishops and two cardinals, he asked forgiveness for sins "in the service of truth, against Christian unity, against the Jews, against respect for [End Page 67] love, peace and cultures; against the dignity of women and minorities, and against human rights," among others.2 A dramatic act without precedent, it was, as Leon Wieseltier wrote, also "an apology that [was] not apologetic,"3 and in that sense much like the Galileo rehabilitation—intended more to absolve the church according to its own standards than to right past wrongs. "Purifying the memory," after all, according to a Vatican document, means eliminating from personal and collective conscience all forms of resentment or violence left by the inheritance of the past . . . the remembrance of scandals of the past can become an obstacle to the Church's witness today, and the recognition of the past faults of the Church's sons and daughters of yesterday can foster renewal and reconciliation in the present.4 In modern parlance, "forgive and forget." Yet who was to be forgiven, and who was to do the forgiving? According to Catholic doctrine, the church itself can never sin, as it is a creation and the inheritance of Christ, but its servants can. The church's liability is limited to "assuming the weight of her children's faults in maternal solidarity."5 Moreover, the pope did not seek the forgiveness from those whom the church had wronged, but from God, who in the eyes of Catholicism is the only one with the power of pardon. Finally, the same document stated that "reciprocity—at times impossible because of the religious convictions of the dialogue partner—cannot be considered an indispensable condition, and that the gratuity of love often expresses itself in unilateral initiatives."6 In other words, this was...

Ethical analyses of vaccines grown in human cell strains derived from abortion: arguments and Internet search

The fact that certain vaccines are grown in cell strains derived decades ago from an aborted fetus is a concern for some. To understand such concerns, a standardized search identified internet sites discussing vaccines and abortion. Ethical concerns raised include autonomy, conscience, coherence, and immoral material complicity. Two strategies to analyse moral complicity show that vaccination is ethical: the abortions were past events separated in time, agency, and purpose from vaccine production. Rubella disease during pregnancy results in many miscarriages and malformations. Altruism, the burden of rubella disease, and protection by herd immunity argue for widespread vaccination although autonomous decisions and personal conscience should be respected.

Moral development, transformative learning, and the dialogical self

Attempts to find positive new directions for moral education now face a number of well‐recognized challenges, including those relating to the rise of commodification and the virtualization of experience. It is argued that there is now a need for innovative approaches that move beyond the traditional frameworks of critical thinking and ethical reasoning, and that encourage the development of moral dispositions and personal conscience. One crucial limitation of traditional approaches lies in their reliance on a monological interpretation of self‐reflection that emphasizes objective impressions of the self. It is proposed that only a dialogical model of self‐reflection that recognizes the presence of competing self‐impressions is fully consistent with the kinds of authentic self‐reflection and critical questioning that are required for the develc pment of moral conscience. The emerging dialogical model of the self is also compatible with an approach to moral conduct grounded in the idea of an ‘ethics without ethics’ in which dispositions to act for the good of the community become the focal goals. It is argued that the dialogical model of the self supports a dynamic view of selfhood and identity through which the subject is encouraged to recognize its own complexity and vulnerability, rather than external principles, as the basis for moral responsibility and action. In practical terms, the dialogical model supports the idea of engaging students in activities in which they are encouraged to monitor their own thoughts, feelings, and actions, rather than in activities which perpetuate objective, monological modes of self‐thematization.

Prescribing Viagra in an Ethically Responsible Fashion

Sildenafil citrate (Viagra) and other newly released pharmaceuticals that assist erectile dysfunction may be one of the most important categories of drugs released in the past decade. Sildenafil is distinctive because it creates a new therapeutic relationship not only between patient and physician, but also with sexual partner(s). Physicians must first evaluate the patient comprehensively, addressing not only erectile function and sexual performance, but overall physical and mental health. Since the drug does impact others, an expanded model for informed consent needs to be considered. Three models to consider include the public health one, ethically justified limits on confidentiality, and a biopsychosocial one. The biopsychosocial model may be preferred because it expands the patient-physician dyad to directly include others. Physicians also need to distinguish between professional, role-related obligations and personal conscience when treating patients whose sexual beliefs and practices differ from their own. Other ethical issues include inappropriate prescribing over the Internet, dealing with unrealistic patient expectations, and fairness in paying for treatment for sexual conditions in both men and women. With these proposed guidelines, physicians can continue to provide steady, reliable guidance for patients while working with yet another scientific advance in medicine.

Indian MBA Students' Perceptions of Ethics & Society: A First Level Analysis

The objective of this study is to understand where MBA (PGP) students stand on issues. The study was driven by a need to understand the students better so as to be able to design courses on business ethics and human values more effectively. In the context of an increasingly competitive environment for admission to top business schools like the IIMs, being able to keep track of the changing values and beliefs of our students will also be of use in other aspects of programme design.A questionnaire to measure Perceptions and Attitudes about Business and Society consisting of 37 items and 17 items on Religious and Spiritual Beliefs was developed for this study. The questionnaire was administered to 175 first-years students and 146 second-year students of HM Bangalore. It was also administered to 51 students of a private management institution affiliated to Bangalore University.The students on the whole appear to be idealistic when confronted with general statements but put in a bind when required to make trade-offs between potentially conflicting factors. They are caught between ideals ami the world as it is. They come out as somewhat self-centered and individualistic but not in a vicious sort of way. They are clearly performance-driven and have imbibed much of the ethic of modern capitalism. IIMB students are found to fall in three clusters - one cluster willing to do anything for performance, another ethical but practical and a third aggressive moralists.Compared to other management students, IIMB students are more business-oriented, self-orientedand performance-oriented. They are also much more willing to do whatever it takes to make a business successful and less questioning of the ethicality of issues. At the same time they are more idealistic as far as bribery or conduct are concerned.By the end of the first year of the MBA programme and summer training at IIMB, the students have less belief in the social responsibility of business (or just a greater faith in unbridled capitalism). They are more willing to do whatever it takes to make a business succeed, whether it be sifting through a competitor's garbage or breaking apart a competitor's product to study its working. At the same time, they see a slightly larger space for personal conscience and values than before.Women are more sensitive than men to human issues. They are less tolerant of unethical behaviour. They see a higher role for conscience and individual values. They are more particular about what is acceptable, whether it is in the realm of advertising or business intelligence. While believers in God are less willing to accept the primacy of maximising shareholder wealth over all other goals, they are at the same time less hesitant to bribe.Implications are drawn for the teaching of business ethics and further research.

Il maestro interiore. Curiositas, attentio, confessio in Agostino

The starting point for this essay is that St. Augustine's thought contains the seeds of a philosophy of personal conscience. The author intends to analyze the concept of curiositas or mental dispersion, one of the greatfundamentals of St. Augustine's thought. The author gives an overview of the phenomenology of mental dispersion, i.e. the weakness of attention, lability of thought, mental crowding and disorder in learning which are all widely familiar to those caught up in their passion for knowledge, this being spasmodic and lacking an ordering principle which can discipline cognitive energy. Paedogogically speaking, it is interesting to see how St.Augustine moves from condemning curiositas to accepting it as a discipline. Thus a bad habit of the mind may lead to gains for self-education understood as cultura animi. Yet no less interesting are the concepts of attention and as concentration on the self and decentration outside the self. These concepts lead to thinking about the radical difference between living in the depths and upon the surface of the self Living on the surface ignores what is of value and is a symptom of the cognitive void which is distraction and which is rooted in an existence void of love.

NRJ Books: The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect By Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel (New York Crown Publishers, 2001), 205 pages This book's jacket shamelessly bills it as of the most important ever written about news, but if thousands of journalists read it and change their attitudes and behavior accordingly, that may well be true. Kovach, the well-known former editor of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, former curator of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and former Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, has worked together again with Tom Rosenstiel, late of the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek, to produce their second book for and through the Project for Excellence in Journalism and its Committee of Concerned Journalists. For the record, this reviewer is a member of the Committee but has received no funding from the project. In a highly readable style, with a sharp eye for the anecdote, with which they start nearly every chapter, Kovach and Rosenstiel posit and then support-- through a combination of facts, logical arguments and appeals to concepts such as professionalism and democracy-one major point in each chapter. Each of those major points will be familiar to most readers. Yet not all of the details will be, and together the major points and details are highly persuasive-especially when one knows that Kovach and Rosenstiel have distilled several years' worth of hundreds of formal interviews and comments in public forums, many from the country's best journalists. Their nine major points are: * Journalism's first obligation is to the truth. * Its first loyalty is to citizens. * Its essence is a discipline of verification. * Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover. * It must serve as an independent monitor of power. * It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise. * It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. * It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional. * Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience. There surely is nothing controversial in those statements, unless one believes-with respect to the ninth point-that journalists shouldbe professional automatons only. But some aspects of how Kovach and Rosenstiel propose journalists reach those nine goals, and what they knowingly left off that list (fairness and balance, among other usual points), may raise a few eyebrows-- although not this reviewer's. Kovach and Rosenstiel, like Jack Fuller, Loren Ghiglione, Gene Roberts and many others, argue that journalists need to develop sources, ask questions, organize and interpret information and provide analysis that the public can't do for itself. This means that journalists need to be more highly educated, better trained and more specialized than ever-the journalist as both expert and thinker / analyst. Journalists must choose the best sources, not the most interesting or the most available, while broadening coverage to what concerns the public, not what only concerns elite sources-such as tactics in presidential campaigns. Imagine the Family Research Council and others of its ilk being quoted only on matters on which they have true expertise-which would mean never. Kovach and Rosenstiel argue that the public wants the truth-not just free speech or commerce and certainly not only mere facts. They urge journalists to ask good questions, not simply ask bad questions loudly or persistently. They are deeply concerned, like Thomas Kunkel and Rem Rieder at American Journalism Review (and this reviewer), about the fact that much American journalism is simply boring even when the news isn't. And Kovach and Rosenstiel provide plenty of evidence for how and why, if much print journalism is dull, most broadcast journalism doesn't even warrant that name. …

Vancomycin prophylaxis and emerging resistance: are ophthalmologists the villains? The heroes?

PURPOSE: To determine whether the routine use of vancomycin prophylaxis in elective cataract surgery promotes emerging resistance and provides effective protection against post-operative endophthalmitis. METHODS: Critical review of the current scientific and clinical literature was undertaken including appropriate statistical analyses of published data. RESULTS: Public health concerns for emergent vancomycin-resistant life-threatening “super bugs” are legitimate. Evaluation of the risk factors that are known to promote emerging vancomycin resistance (sick patients, hospital intensive care unit setting, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clonal infections, prolonged systemic therapy, sub-therapeutic dosing, indwelling intravascular and drainage catheters, total kilogram usage and agricultural use) suggest that ophthalmic usage in routine cataract surgery is unlikely to be a significant factor in promoting emerging worldwide resistance. Clinical and scientific studies purporting to prove the value of vancomycin prophylaxis in cataract surgery contain substantial biases and design flaws that seriously undermine their validity. Issues of potential intraocular toxicity, increased costs, absence of medical-legal protection, and compliance with current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Ophthalmology guidelines (in hospital) mitigate against this practice. CONCLUSIONS: Ophthalmologists who use vancomycin prophylaxis in routine cataract surgery are neither the villains nor heroes according to my interpretation of the currently available scientific data. Personal conscience and an ongoing critical review of the literature should guide each ophthalmologist’s choice in this controversy.

Dr. Ross and Ms. Ellason Reply

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letter to the EditorFull AccessDr. Ross and Ms. Ellason ReplyCOLIN A. ROSS, M.D., and JOAN W. ELLASON, M.A., L.P.C., COLIN A. ROSSSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and JOAN W. ELLASONSearch for more papers by this author, M.A., L.P.C., Dallas, Tex.Published Online:1 Sep 1998https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.155.9.1304aAboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor: We agree with most of the methodological limitations pointed out by Drs. Powell and Howell. Our study lacked controls and a standardized treatment protocol, and subjects were recruited at their most symptomatic. Some of the improvement was probably due to spontaneous remission. The efficacy of psychotherapy for dissociative identity disorder is not a scientific fact.We disagree that a tautology occurred because of our use of outcome measures to assign subjects to integrated versus nonintegrated groups. Only the DSM-IV criteria for dissociative identity disorder from the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule were used in this assignment. No other outcome measures influenced this assignment.On the basis of our data, it seems unlikely that properly conducted therapy for dissociative identity disorder causes deterioration or chronic illness. Many people who receive this diagnosis make remarkable recoveries, given their degree of baseline comorbidity. Our data support allocation of resources to more rigorous prospective treatment outcome studies. In light of the methodological limitations of our study, one can no more attribute therapeutic causality to medications than to psychotherapy or spontaneous remission. There are many ethical, logistical, and methodological problems in designing and conducting rigorous treatment outcome studies for dissociative identity disorder. Treatment to stable integration often takes 4 or 5 years. It would be unethical to randomly assign subjects to a placebo group for that long. Therapists who believe in the specificity of psychotherapy for dissociative identity disorder would be unlikely, as a matter of personal conscience, to participate in a study that involved random assignment to 5 years of placebo treatment. Therefore, one could not recruit therapists to the study. The likelihood that patients would stay in the study in the placebo control condition for that long without dropping out is minimal.Prospective random assignment to placebo or waiting-list control groups in a treatment study for dissociative identity disorder is impractical. We suggest that different schools of thought should be compared to each other. At present, our school of thought is the only one that has provided prospective treatment outcome data with scientific methodology of any kind. The burden is now on competing schools of thought to match or exceed this level of methodology and to demonstrate a superior outcome.We plan to initiate a prospective treatment outcome study beginning at the time of initial diagnosis. It will include measures of health care utilization, employment status, clinical variables, and treatment modalities employed.Another approach would be to screen a large population base, such as all individuals covered by a major managed care company. Subjects with undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder could be identified with the test battery used in our study. Half could be randomly assigned to the treatment we recommend, and half could be left undiagnosed and tracked as they receive conventional treatment for other comorbid disorders.We hope that such studies are completed over the next decade and subjected to rational, reasonable methodological scrutiny such as that provided by Drs. Powell and Howell. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited By Volume 155Issue 9 September 1998Pages 1304a-1305 Metrics History Published online 1 September 1998 Published in print 1 September 1998

「個人の良識」と「会社における立場」 : 企業倫理に関する日本のビジネスマンの意識調査

「個人の良識」と「会社における立場」 : 企業倫理に関する日本のビジネスマンの意識調査

Conscience and conscientious actions in the context of MCOs.

Managed care organizations can produce conflicts of obligation and conflicts of interest that may lead to problems of conscience for health care professionals. This paper provides a basis for understanding the notions of conscience and conscientious objection and offers a framework for clinicians to stake out positions grounded in personal conscience as a way for them to respond to unacceptable pressures from managers to limit services.

Giambologna, Narrator of the Catholic Reformation by Mary Weitzel Gibbons

724book reviews were a feature of the EngUsh history of those days. Persons the man and the priest gets lost in the clutter. His important work Ui manning and helping finance the seminaries comes out clearly, but his work as a writer—and he was one of the best EngUsh stylists of his day—is slighted. One would have preferred to see a clearer picture of Persons' character and personaUty. There do exist some published efforts along this line, especiaUy those focusing in on the last dozen years of his life, which he spent mostly as rector of the EngUsh CoUege, Rome. The reader rarely gets a hint 'why Persons inspires so much devotion on the one hand and so much enmity on the other. He enjoyed the complete confidence of Claudio Aquaviva, one of the greatest Jesuit generals. PhUip II of Spain trusted and revered him. He was a close collaborator of WiUiam Cardinal Allen and was highly regarded by his Jesuit brethren on the English mission. Nevertheless, there is every indication that almost aU Protestants and a good number of EngUsh Catholics opposed his policies and revUed his person. Nevertheless, this biography is a good first step. Edwards has addressed the most difficult and puzzling side ofhis subject. It wUl be easier for future biographers to fiU Ui the blanks, especiaUy if they have access to a good edition of aU of Persons' letters. This is a book that students ofJesuit history, English history, and the Reformation wUl have to read. I would recommend that they do so surrounded by reference books. It wUl repay thetf effort. Thomas H. Clancy, SJ. JesuitArchives, New Orleans Giambologna, Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. By Mary Weitzel Gibbons . [California Studies in the History of Art, XXXIIL] (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1995. Pp. xviii, 262; 13 colorplates, 81 black and white figures. $50.00.) Mary Gibbons successfully challenges the generaUy held view that Giambologna was not interested in subject matter. She demonstrates that the style he invented for the bronze reUefs of Christ's Passion in the Grimani Chapel in Genoa was his response to the newly voiced requirements of the CathoUc Reformation that art be legible and comprehensible to the worshiper. She thus removes these works from the context oflate maniera court art and places them firmly in the avant-garde of Baroque reUgious art. The chapel, commissioned Ui 1579 by Luca Grimani, a prominent Genoese who would later serve as doge, has been neglected because it was destroyed when the church of San Francesco di Castelletto was suppressed under BOOK REVIEWS725 Napoleon and Giambologna's bronzes transferred to the university. The author reconstructs the Grimani sepulcral chapel with the aid of the artist's contemporary Salviati Chapel Ln San Marco Ui Florence, which she caU his "most important extant architectural and sculptural complex" (p. 27), and other precedents where painting and sculpture were combined. She associates die rare pairing of a series ofVirtues with a Passion cycle to the CatiioUc Reformation's focus on good works and the new catechism of 1566 that joined these two elements (p. 57). Passion cycles took on new prominence with the post-Tridentine emphasis on the Eucharist as first among the sacraments, insistence upon the real presence Ui the consecrated host, and the desirabUity offrequent communion for the faithful. The Passion story reminded the worshiper that Christ's sacrifice was made for humankind's redemption, as celebrated m the Eucharist. The prominence ofPUate in Giambologna's cycle is linked to the dUemma of choosing between poUtical expediency and personal conscience, faced by the patron Grimani as a prominent member of the Genoese government. The final chapter, "Giambologna's Narrative Method," contains the essential argument. The artist's technique in the bronze reliefs is shown to be an adaptation of the multiview technique for which he is famous in his statues Ui the round, like the Rape ofthe Sabines. By means of a series of photographs of the reUefs shot from three angles, subtle variations In the narrative are revealed. The spectator's eye is kept Ui constant motion, rendering the narrative dynamic and serving to involve the worshiper. Giambologna's reUefs are contrasted witii...

Professional Ethics in Sociology

The current atmosphere in society is heavy with words that were almost imperceptibly beginning to fall out of usage—first from official usage, and then from everyday and professional language. Sadly enough, these words referred to such concepts as personal honor, human dignity, professional conscience, and duty. Unfortunately the moral, political, and ideological climate reigning in society left its imprint on both science and on relations within the scientific environment. It exerted a direct influence on the development of sociology, which essentially was denied the status of an independent scientific discipline. First it was cut down to applied investigations, and later to sociological investigations. Command-administrative and bureaucratic methods of management were especially burdensome for social scientists. The norms and ideals of science itself were gradually eradicated from science. It was during this time, as R. V. Ryvkina justly pointed out [2], that three types of sociologists...

Case Studies: The Nurse's Appeal to Conscience

A case is presented in which a registered nurse caring for a 63-year-old patient in severe pain from terminal cancer disagrees with the attending physician's order of morphine for fear that it will hasten the patient's death. The nurse finds herself on duty alone one night when the patient and her daughter request more morphine. Bernal and Hoover contend that, because the nurse apparently took no prior action to explore alternative courses of pain relief for the patient or to make other arrangements for care, her duty of care overrides her appeal to conscience in the immediate situation. Aroskar believes that the nurse in this situation must give the injection, find someone else who can, or contact the physician. She holds, however, that nurses should be allowed to refuse to carry out particular procedures based on an appeal to personal conscience if the decision is founded on accurate information, acceptance of consequences, and advance planning.

Democratic capitalism: Developing a conscience for the corporation

One way of ensuring that individual actions do not violate a group's moral norms is to develop within each individual a conscience. Conscience consists in the internalization or acceptance of a group's moral norms as correct and overriding one's self-interest when they conflict. Corporations as well as individuals need a conscience to monitor and control their behavior. The correlative of a personal conscience in a corporation consists in the representation of group interests in the running and managing of the firm. This means consumer and employee representation on the board of directors and management is the most effective way to promote corporate moral behavior.

Duty of the gynecologist to inform a pregnant patient about the need for or desirability of amniocentesis

When a woman above age 35 even a multiparous women asks her obstetrician about the necessity or desirability of a genetic amniocentesis the obstetrician is obliged to inform the patient comprehensively about the risks of amniocentesis and the advantages of amniocentesis. Advantages are detection of chromosomal abnormalities, risks are premature rupture of the membranes or abortion. The obstetricians contract obliges him to recommend or not recommend such tests. If the obstetrician does not give the information to the patient because he is not familiar with the newest scientific standards or because his personal conscience is against amniocentesis because of the possibility of a subsequent eugenic therapeutic abortion the obstetrician must refer the patient to another obstetrician. If the obstetrician does not inform the parents he is liable for the total cost of maintaining a mongoloid infant.

Moral judgment, personality, and attitudes toward authority.

Two studies investigating attitudes toward authority using Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) clarify the dynamics of conformity. The SEA and a semantic differential were administered to 205 male and 275 female students at a Maryland community college. The subjects were asked to rate the concepts mother, father, police, and government on 10 evaluative adjective pairs. Persons endorsing the ethics of social responsibility held more favorable attitudes toward authority than did those endorsing the ethics of personal conscience. This result was replicated using 43 male and 46 female students at The Johns Hopkins University. The implications of these findings for research on social compliance are discussed.