Sex, Lies, and Bankruptcy Court A judge’s most important job is to be impartial. Otherwise, the justice they dispense cannot be blind, as it must be. However, judges are also human beings, meaning that the influences and biases that make it difficult for humans to be impartial–most importantly the self-serving bias—affect judges just as they affect everyone else. The self-serving […] Ver
Moral Equilibrium: Variance in Virtue This blog post is prompted by a brand new article with the intimidating title “Variance in Virtue: An Integrative Review of Intraindividual (Un)Ethical Behavior Research” by professors Perkins, Podsakoff and Welsh (“PPW”). The article addresses the eternal question that often concerns us here at Ethics Unwrapped: why do good people do bad things? Indeed, it […] Ver
Supremely (Over)Confident An interesting new book, Aaron Tang’s Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence is Destroying the Court and How We Can Fix It, prompts this blog post. Tang is a law school professor and former Supreme Court clerk who has developed an explanation for the historically low opinion that the American people have of the Supreme Court these […] Ver
Crypto Ethics: FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried As regular readers of this blog know, our most common form of post arises from our reading of a book or major media exposé about a business scandal. We then mine those sources for any information that might tell us how behavioral ethics concepts might enlighten us as to how and why the scandal occurred […] Ver
“He looks like a criminal to me”: Implicit Bias in the Criminal Justice System On August 3, 2023, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Leon Liggins’ drug conviction because the federal district judge who presided over his trial had stated in open court that Liggins “looks like a criminal to me.” The judge later assured the defendant: “Just because I got mad does not mean I’m biased. I’m […] Ver
Behavioral Ethics for Kristin Harila and Other Mountain Climbers On July 27, 2023, Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, with the help of her guide Tenjin Sherpa (“Lama”), became the fastest climber to scale all 14 of the world’s 8,000+ meter-high mountains—in just 92 days. This amazing feat was marred by allegations that as they summited K2, Harila and Lama…and about 50 other climbers…hiked past Muhammad […] Ver
Football Players Behaving Badly: The Ethics of Hazing at Northwestern University Northwestern University’s athletics department finds itself in the big middle of a number of scandals breaking nearly simultaneously. Not a good look for perhaps the brainiest university of the fourteen (soon to be sixteen and perhaps more) schools in the Big 10. There are scandals everywhere one looks–in baseball, softball, volleyball, and even cheerleading–but we […] Ver
Academic Dishonesty in Ethics Studies Ethics Unwrapped focuses significantly on behavioral ethics, the science of moral decision-making. The science of behavioral ethics is only as solid as the work of the scientists who research in the field, and last month behavioral ethics was dealt a blow when one of the field’s stars, Francesca Gino of the Harvard Business School, was […] Ver
Prejudice in Big Law: Lawyers Behaving Badly When we at Ethics Unwrapped make public presentations about ethics, we speak to a broad range of audiences—e.g., church groups, social groups, student groups, and many professional groups including teachers, doctors, engineers, geologists, construction contractors, and lawyers. Legal professionals are aware that the pressures of their work create numerous ethical challenges and the profession’s continuing […] Ver
Lessons from Paul Woodruff’s «Living Toward Virtue» As he recently indicated in a column in the Washington Post, Paul Woodruff–our friend, colleague, and University of Texas emeritus professor of philosophy and classics–is nearing death after a long and fruitful life. As he also indicated, he plans to spend every day he has left sharing his considerable wisdom. His recent book Living Toward […] Ver