Institutional Conflicts of Interest

Although conflicts of interest do not inevitably lead to unethical conduct, they raise the probability that it will occur. Just as a tornado watch indicates that conditions are favorable to the formation of a twister, a conflict of interest evinces conditions favorable to unethical decisions. Interests conflicting in a conflict of interest pit an obligation against either another obligation or self-interest. That is to say, such conflicts tend to involve deontology and egoism.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon.

Nationalism in Europe: Forestalling Ever Closer Union

Ask a European if the E.U. government could ever consolidate power from the state governments and you would probably get, Nope, we identity with our respective countries. The problem is, such attachments can change. Indeed, they have changed. Europeans alive after fifty years of "ever closer union" would do well to look back at the U.S. after its first fifty (or one hundred) years to get a sense of how the E.U., too, could change. 

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

Health-Care Insurance Reform: A Spectrum of Alternatives with Respect to Federalism

So not to work at cross-purposes, public policy at the federal level of a federal republic should not be at odds with federalism. Put another way, public policy enacted into law that weakens the constitutional archetecture of a governmental system undercuts  is neither prudent nor wise. Heath insurance reform provides us with a case in point. 

The full essay is at "Health Insurance Reform in a Federal System."

1. Robert Pear and David M. Herszenhorn, "Public Option Push in Senate Comes with Escape Hatch," The New York Times, October 26, 2009.

Conflicts of Interest: A Kantian Explanation

In a conflict of interest, either two duties conflict or a duty conflicts with self-interest—whether the “self” be an individual or an association of individuals (e.g., a department or an organization). Where two duties conflict, that which corresponds with the wider “constituency” is presumed to be ethically superior to that which is relatively narrow. For instance, a duty to society is typically thought (admittedly by the public) to ethically supersede a fiduciary duty to stockholders. This assumption is problematic because property rights are not charged with putting society first. Therefore the question of which duty is superior ethically-speaking may come down to one’s vantage-point. To be sure, the duty that is further from one’s self-interest can be said to be superior in most ethical theories with the notable exception of egoism. That theory defeats the typical ethical take on conflicts of interest even where a duty is pitted against self-interest itself.


The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.