How Ethics Is Converted Into Law

The selection of the topic of "How ethics is converted into law" means its author’s dissatisfaction with the current understanding of knowledge of the relationship between morals and law, for it is always pale and even suspicious to explain one theory with another. Theory is pale, while practice is fresh and convincing. Legislative intent is often expressed as some "elemental theorems" about law, among which a considerable part of the element theorems are moral principles. The moral principle, as an elemental theorem, can act as the medium in the construction of morals-law theory with legislation practice of ethics. The reason lies in this:what the golden rule deals with is the legitimacy of human behaviors, which makes "the legitimacy of man’s behaviors" become a completely legal issue. Mainly, law is always some form of "prohibition" provisions (of course, there may be some voluntary provisions, but on the whole, most are the prohibitions); "Freedom exists where law does not prohibit." also indicates that "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire." should be the ethical basis of legislation. What the law punishes are harmful behaviors, and almost without exception, the harmful behaviors exist in the form of "imposing on others what you yourself do not desire". As the chief element theorem of professional ethics, the golden rule of administrative ethics requires that the civil servants in the administrative activities observe the "no-harm principle" of "Do not do what others don’t desire.", which thereby becomes the legislative intent and legislation basis of the civil service legislation of ethics.The relationship between morals and law is on debate for long. It is a theoretical issue as well as a practical one. So far as the former is concerned, it seems to be far from resolved, and in fact it can never be completely resolved, for it is a "Cape of Good Hope" in legal philosophy as well as "Goldbach conjecture" in legal theory.In essence, no matter how morals differs from law, their ultimate goals have the amazing consistency-the progress of human nature and the refining of human virtue, without which morals and law will have no necessity of existing, for both morals and law are for the adjusting of the relationship (international relations included) based on people’s distrust on human nature, aiming at preventing human nature from going bad. The original intention of the U.S. civil service legislation of ethics is nothing more than this:to recuperate the lack of morality of government officials and to foster human virtue in accordance with historical trends of development of human nature and moral progress.Inspired by the world-wide trend of moral legislation in Western countries, starting from the "no-harm principle" in the golden rule, this dissertation analyzes the fact, reasons and values of "administrative code of ethics being converted into law" in the U.S., resolving a universally significant grand legal issue of "how ethics is converted into law", to some extent explaining "how morals is converted law", and ultimately reveals "part of the truth" of the morals/law relationship.It should be noted that the occurrence of the United States civil service ethics legislation does not mean that the U.S. government aims at raising the morality to a high level, but just shows that the moral standards of U.S. government officials or employees has gone down to a very low level in a "materialistic society" and a mechanical society of rule-of-law. From this perspective, the U.S. civil service ethics legislation is really a last resort, which is the analysis from a practical point of view; From a point of the Golden Rules, the U.S. civil service ethics legislation is only the enhancement of the "no-harm principle" of the Golden Rules, far from the "overstating requirements" towards the civil servants, in other words, it is the most basic requirements towards the civil servants, not to mention the moral high-level requirements. Therefore, ethics legislation is a testament of the deterioration of human nature as well as a kid of sadness of humanity, just as the existence of the government is a disgrace to human nature (the Federalists’point of view.)From the perspective of "the morality of law", the original intention and the purpose of the U.S. ethics legislation in civil service is to achieve the American spirit and values its "forefathers" pursued at the beginning of the founding of the U.S.A., and the U.S. ethics legislation in civil service is just the embodiment of "the morality of law" and the American spirit and values in legislation, which can be said to be the political significance and social value of U.S. civil service ethics legislation.The practice of administrative ethics legislation in U.S. and other countries shows that the legalization of administrative ethics is a necessary process and an inevitable trend in the construction of clean governments, and this is a basic "problem consciousness" of this essay. Based on this "problem consciousness", going down the clue of thought of "administrative code of ethics being converted into law", this paper aims at exploring the phenomenon of the administrative ethics legislation, attempting from the "man’s behaviors" to interprete a grand issue in morals/law relationship, and analyzing the facts and the essence of the phenomenon of ethics law through the U.S. ethics legislation, and ultimately explaining "how morals becomes law"; and the main topics concerned here are:"why administrative ethics can become law", "What kinds of administrative ethics can become law" and "after the administrative ethics becomes law", and therefore the three issues related are:(a) the facts and evidence of "administrative ethics into law"; (b) the general relationship between morals and law; and (c)the consequences of "administrative ethics into law". Finally, the author comes to this conclusion:it is the unity of purpose of morals and law, man’s behaviors, that makes "moral law" possible, meanwhile philosophically meditates the human virtue advocated by virtue ethics.