ethics

Ethics of Strategic Voting in Popular Elections

Mgr Łukasz Łyżwa

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

English abstract: Misreporting of preferences is a common behavior among voters but still considered as moral wrongdoing. I propose the conceptual framework of its dilemmas and argue that tactical voting may NOT be regarded as a moral wrong if implemented in a popular election. I examine the relationship between strategic voting and its moral burden in correspondence to particular moral doubts possible to found in respective literature. Thanks to voting paradoxes revealed by mathematicians and economists gathered around a movement called social choice theory I challenge 1) “the consequentialistic argument” and 2) the “express value argument” which eventually is regarded as non-conclusive whereas it presupposes not commonly accepted view on the role of election in democracy itself. In answer to 3) “sincere argument” which suggests manipulation since the agent does not express one’s profound preference, so to say, does not vote naively, I distinguish sincere and insincere manipulations. Then, I challenge five of Sattherwaite’s “transparency arguments”: 4) inequality of skills, 5) inefficiency, 6) non-transparency of voters’ preferences, 7) non-transparency of representatives’ preferences, and 8) randomness, which I treat by and large as a valid with minor comments added. However, I believe that some of the “transparency arguments” can be adopted as a virtue rather than a vice of democracy, because encourage cooperation and induce to actualize ongoing coalitions. Finally, I distinguish a weak and a strong position against treating strategic voting as moral wrongdoing. Former one argues that strategic voting may be “sincere”, therefore morally acceptable according to argument 3). However, the latter rejects the election’s claim to bear any moral burden and persuades that voting itself should be perceived as an ethics-free decision-making device.

Keywords: ethics, moral, elections, social choice theory, strategic voting, Sattherwaite, Arrow’s paradox

Language: English

Published: Number 3(32)/2022, pp. 60-71

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2022.3.60

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Number of downloads: 19

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Against Dignity: An Argument for a Non-Metaphysical Foundation of Animal Law

Prof. dr hab. Tomasz Pietrzykowski

University of Silesia in Katowice

English abstract: Animal protection as an emerging field of legislation needs to be constitutionalized as well as comprehensively expounded by legal scholars. As it is a growing body of regulation and accompanying legal theories, it needs to develop a solid conceptual and axiological framework, in particular a set of basic values and principles on which detailed rules are to be founded. Lacking these, the domain of animal law is still in the pre-paradigm stage and remains an assemblage of dispersed ideas, concepts and regulatory measures. It yet has to develop into a coherent whole that may grow to be a mature regulatory and doctrinal domain of the law. In order to reach this stage, it should be founded on clear theoretical and constitutional grounds. Lacking those, its further development, and effective operation may be seriously impeded. There seem to be two basic approaches that may serve as the possible foundations for a viable model of animal protection law. The first may be referred to as the “dignity” approach and the other, as the “sentientist” approach. According to the first of those two approaches, animal protection law should rely on the concept of animal dignity as its philosophical foundation. The second approach rejects the idea that the concept of animal dignity as the basis for the relevant legislation as philosophically dubious and entailing objectionable normative consequences for the scope and content of legal protections of animals. Thus, it aims rather at legal norms and policies being based directly on scientifically informed theories of sentience, evolutionarily developed nervous structures underlying cognitive and emotional capabilities or species-typical biological and psychological needs that condition the subjective well-being of a given creature. The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss both these approaches and to argue that the former is philosophically, conceptually and practically flawed. The second approach, even despite some serious disadvantages, is therefore deemed to be preferable and more promising.

Keywords: animals, dignity, rights, law, constitution, ethics

Language: English

Published: Number 2(27)/2021, pp. 69-82.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.2.69

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Number of downloads: 104

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Ethics of a Public Administration Official in Poland: Prospects for the Development of Professional Deontology

Dr Dawid Kostecki

Catholic University in Lublin

English abstract: The development of modern civilization associated with the digital revolution poses entirely new challenges in terms of ethics for public administration. Whereas practical ethical instruments in the form of codes of best practice have already been developed for the profession of a lawyer or a doctor, the internal diversification of the profession of a public official (public authority officials, territorial self-government officials) as well as the transformation of public administration have not been conducive to the development of appropriate ethical standards. The author aims at providing an answer to the following question: on which axiological foundation should the code of a public official be based? On the one hand, historical background seems to be providing a definite answer, on the other, however, current depreciation of the profession of a public official as well as technological progress shed a new light on ethical reflections.

Models used in public administration until now, i.e. the model of ideal bureaucracy, the accountability model, and the new public manager model, have not proven to be effective. Nevertheless, according to the author, the organizational culture within the frame of the good governance model constitutes a unique solution which can prove successful in public administration. At this point, the process of restitution of public officials’ ethos can be a relevant factor. It is so especially due to the fact that public officials’ ethos embodies a development area for educating professional public officials and constitutes a premise for a good functioning of public administration at the same time.

Enumerating the drivers of growth for the public officials’ ethos in connection with a unique idea of the code of best practice based on the triad of integrity, benevolence, and accountability constitutes an axiological suggestion which is noteworthy for the deontology of the profession of a public official.

Keywords: ethics, public administration, ethos, axiology, values, good governance

Language: English

Published: Number 2(27)/2021, pp. 26-40.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.2.26

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Number of downloads: 104

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Between Justice and Mercy: Comparison of American and Russian Versions of 12 Angry Men

Dr Paweł Jabłoński

University of Wrocław

Abstract: The aim of the article is to thematize two different types of attitudes to the law – which, referring to works by Marek Jan Siemek and Lon Luvois Fuller, I call the “Eastern attitude” and the “Western attitude”. This task is realized by a comparative interpretation of two famous films: 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet, and Nikita Mikhalkov’s Russian-language remake of Lumet’s movie, titled 12. I try to show that although these two films tell similar stories, there are significant differences between them in regard to the perception of the law. In the American version, the law is a system of mechanisms that really work and are taken seriously. In the Russian version, the law is, to a large extent, only an appearance, which in reality must be replaced by ethics.

Keywords: law, respect for law, ethics, “West”, “East”, justice, mercy

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(26)/2021, s. 45-61.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2021.1.45

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Number of downloads: 175

A short history of the British Critical Legal Conference or the responsibility of the critic

Prof. dr Costas Douzinas

Birkbeck, University of London

English abstract: General jurisprudence is a type of thinking about law and the social bond developed by British critical legal scholars. Returning to the classical concerns of (legal) philosophy, it examines the legal aspects of social reproduction both inside and outside state law, treating posited law as a part of wider legality. It brings back to the centre the aesthetic, ethical and material aspects of legality, as well as includes the political economy of law, the legal constructions of subjectivity and the ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity both disciplining bodies and offering sites of resistance. The British Critical Legal Conference (CLC) is a school of thought committed to a plurality of theoretical approaches to law and to radical politics. The first CLC took place in 1985 and has taken place annually without interruption since. The CLC has introduced a number of themes, approaches and strategies unknown or dismissed by mainstream scholarship, including semiotics, rhetoric, literature, aesthetics and psychoanalysis. A variety of critical schools, such as postmodernism, phenomenology, postcolonialism, critical race, feminism, queer theory, art theory and history, the ethics of otherness, the ontology of plural singularity, the critique of biopolitics and post–politics have been pioneered in the CLC.

Keywords: Critical Legal Studies, aesthetics, ethics, British Critical Legal Conference

Language: Polish
Translated by: Rafał Mańko

Published: Number 1(8)/2014, pp. 5-17

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Number of downloads: 141

On three limitations of the lawyers’ power

Dr Paweł Jabłoński, Dr Przemysław Kaczmarek

University of Wrocław

English abstract: According to the initially assumed concept of limitations of lawyers’ power the most important elements of those limitations are: legal text, legal culture, and ethics. This structure is characterized by the relations where the anterior element defines the framework of the latter, i. e. text affects legal culture and ethics, while legal culture affects ethics. However, exceptions apply where the latter element might lead to the collapse of the framework of the primary factor (for instance, interpretation contra legem based on axiological argumentation). The aforementioned structure of limitations of legal power is complemented by interaction of various other elements, such as social expectations, political entanglement (depending on the extent to which it is not consumed by ethics) and non-judicial expertise.

Keywords: limitations of the lawyers’ power, legal text, legal culture, ethics

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 93-108.

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Number of downloads: 128

Formalism in the application of law and ethics on the example of environmental law regulations

Mgr inż. Adrian Zając

University of Wrocław

English abstract: This paper discusses formalism, a multi-faceted and problematic research topic when applied to law. The most important point of reference in the presented point of view is ethics. That is why the author emphasizes the importance of asking whether formalism is an ethical behaviour in the context of applying the law. The application of law is presented using the following two conceptions: as a behavior of officials, acting as public administration authorities, and as a theoretical model of this phenomenon. This paper is mostly about the first conception: the behaviour of officials and authorities. The problem of formalism and the effects it can lead to are discussed on the basis of specific laws and regulations concerning environmental protection. Research shows that formalism is based on lack of care for the integrity of the legal text and lack of officials’ consistency in recreating the intention of the lawmaker. This kind of activity is presented as unethical, as it may cause unjustified, negative effects in the life of the individual who is a party to the proceedings.

Keywords: ethics, application of law, formalism, environmental protection law

Language: Polish

Received: 06.06.2017
Accepted: 08.09.2017

Published: Number 1(16)/2018, pp. 83-93.

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Number of downloads: 115

On the structure of normative intuitions: universal moral grammar

Mgr Maciej Próchnicki

Jagiellonian University

English abstract: The aim of the article is to critically characterize the new, interdisciplinary research program on morality: universal moral grammar, and to describe its meaning for jurisprudence. Its proponents, such as John Mikhail and Marc Hauser, refer to John Rawls’ linguistic analogy, i.e. comparison of morality to language and suggestion to study it similarly to Noam Chomsky’s generative linguistics paradigm.

According to moral grammarians morality, like language, settles on innate, universal cognitive capacities, common to all people. Some evidence supporting these claim, come from various scientific disciplines, such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, anthropology or logic, but they are criticised as weak and inconclusive.

The article tries to assess to what extent the linguistic analogy is accurate and useful, analyzing some of the most important N. Chomsky’s claims and their adaptations to the systems of social norms, such as morality and law. The first argument is so called poverty of the stimulus, assuming that the classic learning mechanisms cannot explain the phenomenon of acquisition of language and morals. Other elements of N. Chomsky’s theories adapted to analyze morality include characterizing morality as a system of principles and parameters, divisions between I-morality/E-morality and competence/performance, and also an assumption that the specialized mental module for it exists.

Research conducted in universal moral grammar program may have substantial influence on jurisprudence. Firstly, assumptions made by moral grammarians can be seen as a construction of a modern, naturalized theory of natural law, based on empirical study. Moreover, the goal of the program is to fully describe concepts such as guilt, act, obligation or damage, and as an effect to schematize it as an advanced deontic logic, and also to discover sources of intuitions regarding them not only through research on their biopsychological foundations, but also through legal anthropology and comparative legal studies.

Keywords ethics, legal philosophy, generative linguistics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, Noam Chomsky

Language: Polish

Received: 02.10.2016
Accepted: 28.11.2016

Published: Numer 1(14)/2017, pp. 102-114.

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Number of downloads: 157