Lei e ética

When it comes to discuss law and ethics it is necessary to realize that both of the concepts can be hugely different between different countries. Based on that, it is possible to engage on deep and usually complicated arguments. To illustrate this situation it is a good comparative to explore the, not so big, difference between law and ethics in Brazil and the same idea in the USA.

It is known that the law system used in the USA is the Common Law and in Brazil is the Civil Law. They are pretty different in a lot of ways but, maybe, the biggest of it is definitely that in the first one there is no need of a written constitution or codified law to be applied, since the judicial decisions are binding. On the other side, the Civil Law takes only legislative enactments to be binding for all, since there is a written constitution based on specific codes enshrining basic rights and duties. None of these is new information for anyone who has ever studied law so the real debate should be: how about ethics?

There is a common sense that ethic is a universal idea which is applied to everyone in the world, because it is something about the human being and not about nationality. Well, this is completely absurd. Ethics, just like culture, is memetic which means that it is information that is passed between generations in a limited area. Taking that, it is easy to understand why there is no way to use our laws, our ideas and our ideals and apply in another country. For an extremely simple example, here in Brazil it is against the Code of Ethics to make any kind of advertisement or marketing for law offices and in the USA there is a television advertisement for a law office every brake.

Finally, considering how complex can be an argument based on Ethics and Law, this short essay looks almost vain, but even though it is not as deep as it should be, it gives us one thing to think about: Based on what people keep judging who does not follow their own Law and Ethics? Everyone