Duties, Ethics, and Professional Conduct
Duties and Ethics
Ethics defines the duties individuals have to themselves and others. These duties can be categorized as legal, moral, or conventional. Moral duties, derived from internal principles of good and evil, are autonomous and self-imposed. Cicero highlighted virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as essential for ethical conduct. Key elements in human beings include moral conscience and free will.
Human Action and Morality
Human action involves individual thinking and the capacity to differentiate between good and bad. Acts of man, like automatic reflexes, lack moral weight, while human acts involve conscious choice and moral responsibility. Utilitarianism evaluates behavior solely on practical outcomes, while personalism prioritizes human beings and their intrinsic value.
Types of Standards
- Legal: Coercible, heteronomous, external
- Religious: Not coercible, heteronomous, internal
- Moral: Coercible, autonomous, internal
- Conventional: Not coercible, heteronomous, external
Professional Ethics
A profession is a specialized activity providing income. Its characteristics include intellectual, scientific, and humanistic aspects; steadfastness; a clear vocation; tradition; collegiality; social status; and independence.
Legal Profession
Professional Secrecy
Clients must confide in their legal representatives, trusting that these confidences will be kept secret, except in specific circumstances, such as when a client reveals intent to commit a crime.
Appropriate Fees
Fees should be fair and appropriate, considering the matter’s complexity, legal difficulty, lawyer’s experience and specialization, and time spent.
Loyalty and Honesty
Loyalty and honesty are based on justice and truth. Bribery, whether initiated by the service provider (active) or the client (passive), is unethical.
Contracts for Professional Services
These contracts are bilateral, onerous, with freedom of formalities, principal, and successive treatment. Essential elements include existence and consent. Validity requirements include capacity, absence of consent defects, legality of object and purpose, and formalities.
Obligations of Parties
- Lawyer: Perform the service according to the contract, work personally, be liable for damages caused by negligence, incompetence, or fraud, maintain professional secrecy, and timely notify the client about service changes.
- Client: Pay fees and reimburse expenses.
Grounds for Termination of Services
- Withdrawal
- Contract termination
- Contract inefficiency
- Death
- Waiver by the attorney
- Client’s appointment of another attorney
Injunction
Power of attorney attached to a professional services contract, given to a law graduate with a professional ID or a lawyer.
Decalogue of Lawyers
- Work according to conscience
- Fully define your client
- Maintain confidentiality
- Be competent
- Be faithful to the law
- Be fair
- Be independent
- Be disinterested
- Define and preserve your profession
Public Service
A public servant performs work for the state under public law. Integrated human action involves consciousness, freedom, and will.
Duties of Public Servants
- Be fair
- Perform duties personally
- Maintain good conduct
- Respect those served
- Comply with laws
- Use state property appropriately
- Disclose assets
- Report misconduct by other officials
- Respect superiors and inferiors
- Avoid committing the state
- Respect hierarchy
- Refuse improper payments
- Avoid conflicts of interest
- Maintain confidentiality
- Avoid misuse of public property
Bioethics
Bioethics is the systematic study of human behavior in life sciences and healthcare. Key vertices of the bioethical crisis include crises of life itself and its regulation. Miguel Villoro Toranzo discusses compulsory licensing as a moral standard enforced by the state.
Basic Bioethical Statements
- Biosafety
- Bioresponsibility
- Biojustice
- Biosolidarity
- Biotolerance
- Global biodiversity
Teodora Zamudio defines bioethics as addressing problems in life sciences. Basic principles include charity, autonomy, and justice. Justification levels include theories, principles, rules, and judgments. Professional conduct rules include confidentiality, accuracy, and consent. Ethical principles are conceptual, methodological, and pragmatic. Informed consent elements include information, understanding, and free choice. Social solidarity addresses economic hardship and needs.
Disabilities of Public Servants
Public servants are prevented from procedures if they have a personal interest, a relationship with involved parties, act as an expert, or if legally prohibited.