A Philosophical Perspective on the Regulation of Business

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A Philosophical Perspective on the Regulation of Business

ABSTRACT: The paper compares the Anglo-American and continental legal systems in parallel with a comparison of the philosophical foundations for each. The defining philosophical distinction between the two legal traditions (viz., the Anglo-American system is predicated on idealism and the continental system on materialism) is shown to influence the way in which criminal justice is handled by the two systems as applied to citizens, and how this influence is carried across to the regulation of business as applied to corporations. The idealistic (possibly theological) worldview inherent in the Anglo-American legal system explains its moral presumptions regarding human freedom, dignity, and responsibility, while the materialist worldview inherent in the continental legal systems explains its amoral assumptions about human motivations and behavior. I suggest that while the Anglo-American legal system may be justified in its moral philosophical presumptions as applied to citizens, the continental legal system, with its amoral assumptions, more accurately reflects corporations than citizens. Understanding how the philosophy behind the two legal systems influences the application of law in modern society can lead to improvements in public policy.

There is an effort underway in the automotive sector of the ever-expanding global economy to harmonize motor vehicle regulations world-wide. This micro-experiment in world democracy (along with others like it in different economic sectors) differs from more prominent examples of negotiating international law in that it deals with the amoral realm of business, rather than the moral/immoral realm of international conflict and criminal ...

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... To rationalize is not to justify; harsh punishment does tend to result from moral outrage, but this tendency merely betrays self-righteousness on the part of the morally outraged, and as such is an immoral influence (this is the blame-wraith of moral judgment).

(8) This is not to say that the analogy between a corporation and a person is completely baseless (corporations are made up of persons, after all), but the human motivations behind corporate activity, the overriding goal of which is monetary profit, and the human aspirations behind leading of an ethical life in civil society, are fundamentally different, and therefore may well warrant different legal/regulatory approaches.

(9) In spite of the practical (in the Aristotelian sense) nature of public policy, it requires moral justification (in the Platonic sense) in order to escape this derisive connotation.

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