COMMENTARY

• Law is based on ethics, but NOT the highest ethic.
  
  
• Law is the minimum ethic, written down and enforced; behavior that is not merely desired but mandated.
  
  
• Ethics and law are guides for resolving conflict between people; on a continuum from the mandates of law to ethics to manners. Law is the minimum ethic and, therefore, legal behavior is not necessarily the highest ethic. Laws are proscriptions or prescriptions of extreme behavior.
  
  
• Ralph W. Emerson: "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
  
  
• John Rawls' Original Position hypothesizes that people will be fair to each other only if they are behind a "veil of ignorance" as to whether they are in a high or low position in society. He has written a theory of social justice. He suggests that one can imagine what the laws of society should be, by taking what he calls the "Original Position." He asks people to imagine that they are making laws for their society, working behind an imaginary "veil of ignorance." The veil keeps the lawmaker from knowing his place or rank in society. Rawls believes that, from behind such a veil, the lawmaker would make laws that indeed benefit everyone. The underlying assumption is that people operate on the basis of self-interest. This theory assumes that a hierarchiacal (Marxian) class system exists, and that a "zero sum" game exists that makes advancing one's self-interest detrimental to others.