On The Ethical Foundation Of Market Supeevision Law System

The internal economic law circle’s research on basic theory of economic law has mainly focused on values and principles, history of the development of theory, fundamental categories, legal relations, objects adjusted by and international comparison of economic law. All these researches above pay more attention on economics and law than on ethics, but the ethical foundation is theoretically valuable to economic law. Since there is a grand social cultural background and moral context behind the legislation of economic law, concentrating on the ethical foundation of economic law helps to a new conception of and find moral support for various norms of economic law.Starting with Kant’s three principles of morality, this article detailedly analyzes the relationship between market regulation law and ethics at both macroscopic and microscopic levels. At macroscopic level, Kant believes that there do exists internal relations between morality and law, which both derive from pure practical reason. The only difference between them is that morality is a form of moral law inherently exercised on rational human beings that were considered as noumenal, while law is a form of moral law exercised externally and inherently on human beings that were considered to be both noumenal and phenomenal. Therefore, from this point of view, market regulation law and economic ethics both originate from the moral principles established by practical reason of rational man for himself in economic practice. The market regulation law should never ignore ethical norms, which should be drew on and made use of when we enact and enforce the market regulation law. As for Kant, what we called ‘market failure’ leads to the birth of market regulation law, that is to say, moral norms’ lack of compelling force has made it incapable of being observed by sensuous men as they tend to subject themselves to their own lust in the phenomenal world. Meanwhile, as Kant has already puts it, there are three processes to go through in order to achieve the real freedom of human beings: the original freedom, the legal freedom and the moral freedom. In this sense, legal freedom is a necessary stage of human endeavors towards moral freedom. And the final end of intervention of market regulation law on economic activities is to break human beings break away from evils of phenomenal world to kingdom of ends. Thus, the existence of market regulation law used as means of supervision on market activity is an inevitable stage of human history which ultimately leads to the absolute moral freedom.From microscopic perspective, after analyzing and synthesizing, the market regulation law can be investigated from three aspects: legal principles, legal norms and legal procedures. This article first starts with the market legal principles, and analyzes moral values implicated in it. However, there are little consensus about contents of market regulation law’s principles. Through definition and screening, this thesis finally established three general principles: principle of maintaining the order of market competition, principle of tilt protection on vulnerable groups in market and principle of maintaining the efficiency of market economic operation. Analyzing form Kant’s philosophy, all of them are ethically justified, and the third principle is inferior to the first two principles in value position. Second, this thesis choose market entities’ obligation as a starting point for analyzing the ethical foundation implicated in market regulation law. Market entities bear various types of obligations in different relations, and this thesis generally categorizes these types of obligations into: type of ‘proprietor-consumer-state’ and of ‘proprietor-proprietor-state’, and from Kant’s perspective justifies the inherent connection between market regulation law and ethics. Finally, by associating Kant’s moral philosophy and market regulation’s legal procedures, this thesis offers suggestion in Kant’s sense, aiming at refining the legal procedures and encouraging the transformation of internal values of procedures. Above all, the inquiries and discussions of the ethical foundation hidden behind market regulation law manifest the ethical origins of it, and the market regulation law should divert itself from ‘regulation ’ to ‘governance’.