Code of conduct

“ Therefore, whether we like it or not, the moral code by which we regulate our conduct is being constantly revised and altered: old rules are being silently expunged and new rules silently inscribed in the palimpsest by the busy, the unresting hand of an invisible scribe. ”

“ It is assumed, in the first place, that adequate guidance for conduct in life, private and public, could be had; and that a moral code, rationally elaborated by men as they now are, would be duly operative upon them. ”

“ According to that code, if a man made private inquiries into a lady's affairs, without being either her husband, her father, or her brother, he subjected himself to the responsibility of justifying his conduct in the estimation of others ”

“ It is for such persons, and for the many others who, though not unacquainted with the principles which should guide them in their conduct, are yet often at fault upon questions of detail, and sometimes commit errors, which are the more excusable that absolute rules, deduced from precedent and established by practice alone could set them right, that this code of Modern Etiquette has been prepared. ”

“ He who possesses it will need no list of what are lawful and unlawful made out for him. He will be better guided than by any carefully compiled code of duty set before him. All, therefore, that shall be attempted in this direction is to give a few general counsels which may be serviceable. ”

“ Moral and legal schemes that attempt the impossible in the way of definite formulation compensate for explicit strictness in some lines by implicit looseness in others. The only truly severe code is the one which foregoes codification, throwing responsibility for judging each case upon the agents concerned, imposing upon them the burden of discovery and adaptation. ”

“ Canons of professional ethics have been adopted by lawyers and doctors; any member of these professions who is guilty of breaking these canons suffers loss of prestige and, almost inevitably, financial loss. So must it be in every industry; each must be organized and must formulate for itself its code; so that pressure from within will supplement pressure from without. There is plenty of capacity for loyalty, self-denial, and discipline in men, even in captains of industry ”

“ And it is sometimes difficult to define the distinction between that which merely affects or influences and that which regulates or furnishes a rule for conduct. There is no such difficulty in the present case. ”

“ When law is used in the sense of the standard of justice, it is said that it “is the standard of conduct which in consequence of the inner impulse that urges men toward a reasonable form of life, emanates from the whole, and is forced upon the individual”; [3] or that it is “the objective co-ordination of possible acts among men, according to an ethical principle which determines them and prevents their interference.” ”

“ The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be. Conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society.' The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be regulated. ”

“ The situation is unique in the life of the individual affected, but not in the life of the group, the community, of which he is a part. At such times there are norms of conduct that help to stabilize our judgment, and make it certain and objective. ”

“ And so, in any State where it can be said with truth that the average ethical standard for individual conduct is better than the legal standard, the duty of individual resistance to evil law begins to arise. ”

“ Then society appoints officers whose special conventional function is to see to the execution of these social rules of conduct. They are legally amenable to the rules of conduct they are to carry out, socially amenable to the community that appoints them, individually amenable to their own conscience and to God. ”

“ Society, therefore, must frame and enforce rules for the regulation and control of the conduct of its individual members, must even restrain them to some extent from the gratification of some of their desires. ”

“ The laws of etiquette and fair play are just as obligatory as legislative enactments—the Ten Commandments as efficacious as the Penal Code."
"Don't you agree with that, Tutt?" demanded Bonnie. "Every man's conscience is his own private unwritten law." ”

“ The rule of conduct among some powerful individuals and corporations is to “go on until you are stopped,” in other words, to do what you like until somebody objects, or until you are stopped by the law. ”

“ We find no difficulty in establishing standards of conduct that become the lady and the gentleman—and the regulations that are in effect are based upon the belief that those who come here can and will measure up to these standards. ”

“ Those rules, it is well known, exclude much information which would be quite sufficient to determine the conduct of any reasonable man, in the most important transactions of private life. These rules, at every assizes, save scores of culprits whom judges, jury, and spectators, firmly believe to be guilty. ”

“ As men of the first character and respectability may be expected to solicit for such Commissions, no doubt can be entertained, either of the purity of their conduct, or their exertions to sell to the best advantage. ”

“ The same is true of every system of conduct ever propounded. We may believe the rule sound and good in its own time and place, "Whosoever shall smite you on the right cheek turn to him the other also," and "If any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." A man may believe these rules to be more than sound and good, to be of divine origin—yet recognize that in our own time, and here, in Europe or America, the rules would work ill. ”

“ The same considerations which have been urged to show that an act alone, by itself, does not and ought not to impose either civil or criminal liability, apply, at least frequently, to a series of acts, or to conduct, although the series shows a further co-ordination and a further intent. ”

“ With the evolution of society, made possible by institutions maintaining order, and associating in men's minds the sense of obligation with prescribed acts and with desistances from forbidden acts, there arose opportunities for seeing the bad consequences naturally flowing from the conduct interdicted and the good consequences from the conduct required. ”

“ A slight extension of custom identifies it with customary morality, the prevailing standard of right conduct, the mores of the time. [20] This is the point of contact between the method of tradition and the method of sociology. They have their roots in the same soil. Each method maintains the interaction between conduct and order, between life and law. Life casts the moulds of conduct, which will some day become fixed as law. Law preserves the moulds, which have taken form and shape from life. ”

“ The conditions that regulate the authoritative enforcement of actions, are exhaustively given in works on Jurisprudence, but they do not all concern Ethical Theory. The expedience of imposing a rule depends on the importance of the object compared with the cost of the machinery. A certain line of conduct may be highly beneficial, but may not be a fit case for coercion. ”

“ They shall also have power to hear, try and determine all complaints against any member of the Society, for dis- honesty, immoral or improper conduct, and to dismiss any member from the Society who shall wilfully disobey or violate any of the provisions of this Constitution or the By-laws of this Society, or be guilty of any immoral, dishonest or improper conduct, or for other good cause. ”

“ The identity required is to be in 'the practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding.' The personal conduct and administration of the judge in the discharge of his separate functions is, in our judgment, neither practice, pleading, nor a form nor mode of proceeding within the meaning of those terms as found in the context. ”

“ Law, then, may be fairly characterized as an impersonal referee, whose business it is to persuade and oblige the disturbers of the social equilibrium to employ the methods and standards of conduct which have always marked free men. ”

“ It may be most material, not only as to his responsibility, but as to future rights and proceedings. It may regulate in a great measure his course of conduct, and his exercise of vigilance in regard to the party in whose favour it is given. ”

“ The theory or intention of the law is not that the feeling of approbation or blame which a particular twelve may entertain should be the criterion. They are supposed to leave their idiosyncrasies on one side, and to represent the feeling of the community. The ideal average prudent man, whose equivalent the jury is taken to be in many cases, and whose culpability or innocence is the supposed test, is a constant, and his conduct under given circumstances is theoretically always the same. ”

“ Every law of conduct more or less affects the character of the persons subject to it, so long as it is enforced; and necessarily, every variation in the character more or less affects the sentiments from which the external law derives its force. ”

“ Responsibility, abundance of criminals, their distribution according to time, place, personality, and circumstances, the regularity of their appearance, all these have so profound an influence upon us both essentially and circumstantially that even our judgments and resolutions, no less than the conduct and thought of other people whom we judge, are certainly altered by them. ”

“ A law is merely a rule of human conduct, a rule of conduct for human beings which is enforced by the Nation, the State, or the city. There are other rules of human conduct enforced by the parents, teachers, or employers—those who have authority over others, those whose duty it is to direct the conduct of others. ”

“ The moral code, in short, like the legal code, should adapt itself to changing circumstances, keeping the public good always as its motive. If so, we have to consider in what the public good consists. ”

“ Here we are dealing with the conduct of persons within the jurisdiction affecting the safety of other persons within it. If the rule is wise there is no reason why it should not be universal. Wise or not it is law and the question is why general words should not be generally applied. ”

“ Indolence or passivity has tolerated what the considerate judgment of the community condemns. In such cases, one of the highest functions of the judge is to establish the true relation between conduct and profession. There are even times, to speak somewhat paradoxically, when nothing less than a subjective measure will satisfy objective standards. Some relations in life impose a duty to act in accordance with the customary morality and nothing more. In those the customary morality must be the standard for the judge. ”

“ It is only intended to point out that, when we are dealing with that part of the law which aims more directly than any other at establishing standards of conduct, we should expect there more than elsewhere to find that the tests of liability are external, and independent of the degree of evil in the particular person's motives or intentions. ”

“ This is accomplished by resolutions upon submitted questions which seem to fall into two classes: those which are found contrary to a "Rule of the Profession" and those which are pronounced to be "Undesirable Practices". These rulings (without names or other particulars which might lead to identification) are all reported in the "White Book", an annual book of practice in general use, and constitute a code of ethics and etiquette.
An examination of these rulings shows very few findings upon rudimentary morals ”

“ Any man of average comprehension should know that some kinds of conduct, such as assault or blocking passage on the street, will annoy others and are clearly covered by the 'annoying conduct' standard of the ordinance. ”

“ When we are considering conduct, however, in its general aspects and not exclusively in its relations to law, we appear to need a word to express any inducement, whether of a pleasureable or painful nature, which may influence a man's actions, and such a word the term 'sanction' seems conveniently to supply. Taking the word in this extended sense, the sanctions of conduct may be enumerated as the physical, the legal, the social, the religious, and the moral. ”

“ In the complicated relations of human life, various rules for the moral conduct of men have been devised, some of them in the form of statute laws, some in the form of customs, and, in virtue of these rules, certain artificial demands are made of men, which have no foundation in the moral nature of man; these demands are thought to represent duties. We have the same word to describe what I ought to do as subject to the law of God, and what is demanded of me by custom, or the statute. We call each a duty. ”

“ Conduct that annoys some people does not annoy others. Thus, the ordinance is vague, not in the sense that it requires a person to conform his conduct to an imprecise but comprehensive normative standard, but rather in the sense that no standard of conduct is specified at all. ”

“ These give us a tolerable correct idea of the laws then in force which were designed to regulate the conduct of men in the various relations of life and show what was the practical administration of those laws. ”

“ To call them so only leads to confusion of thought and remissness of conduct. These examples represent a long category so extended that no citizen can ever be sure that in what he does he is not offending against some criminal statute. ”

“ It reconciles the actual conduct of the better sorts of men with rules derived from observed facts and laws in regard to the development of conduct, and would tend to reconcile their conduct with their words, if men in general would but recognize the folly and danger of a system by which they have one set of rules on their lips and another for their actual guidance. ”

“ By their former conclusions, every soul must judge what the magistrate commandeth, and is not bound, even in indifferent things, to the magistrates’ law, further than his own soul, conscience, and judgment ascends to the reason of it. ”