NOTICE

The following One Credit course is open to students of 3rd, 4th ,5th year LL.B and
both years of LL.M. Interested students may please register with A.R. Academic
by 28th of January 2010. Students are requested to clearly note their email id while
registering.
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An Introduction to Applied Ethics and Law
(2nd -9th February 2010)

by

Shubhankar Dam
Assistant Professor
School of Law, Singapore Management University
LL.M (Harvard), B.C.L(Oxford), B.A, LL.B(NUJS)

It may be worthwhile to begin by clarifying what this course is not about. This course
does not preach. It is not a course on moral science and, therefore, does not provide
students with “value” education. On the contrary, it focuses on the interpretative nature
of ethical argumentation, and explores how ethics and law interact. For example, why
do we act (or reason) the way we do? It begins with commonly accepted ethical
positions (e.g. it is wrong to lie/ it is wrong to “discriminate”) and tries to work back to
identity precisely the nature (and limitations) of one’s reasoning. Why is it wrong to lie?
So what if it is “wrong”? What if a thousand lives can be saved by telling a lie? To put it
more generally, this course aspires to critically evaluate the exercise of judgment (or the
coherence of reasoning) using a series of ethical issues. And in so doing, it almost
exclusively focuses on three questions – Why? So what? What if? On the whole, the
course is designed to achieve two objectives. In part, it attempts to provide students
with an elementary (and highly selective) introduction to the language of ethics. Ethics,
like any other discipline, has its own language and part of the course is designed to
introduce students to some of the approaches to ethics. And secondly, it aims to
introduce students to the “method” of applied ethics, and how these argumentative
practices interact with law.

Course Outline

1
 Introduction

A. Applied Ethics: What is it? Do we need it?

B. Tasting an Ethics Argument: Are you responsible for global poverty?

Approaches to Ethics

C. Egoism: Ayn Rand’s Self-interest

D. Utilitarianism: Bentham’s Calculus

E. Kantianism: Kant’s Moral Duties

Applied Ethics

F. Discrimination: What’s wrong with it?

G. Environmental Ethics: Are trees different from mammals?

H. Corruption: Isn’t it a good way to make money?

Daniel Mathew

(Course Coordinator)