The appearance of impropriety : how ethics wars have undermined American government, business, and society

A cautionary lesson, now grown dismayingly familiar, about well-intended reforms producing unintended bad results. Ever since the ``Big Bang''--the moral cataclysm of Vietnam and Watergate two decades ago--the US has promulgated the most far- reaching ethics-reform measures in its history, affecting government, business, science, and the scholarly community, according to Morgan and Reynolds (a D.C. attorney and a law professor at the Univ. of Tennessee, respectively). Yet, despite the passage of laws such as the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, cynicism about institutions has spread rather than diminished. The authors attribute much of this morass to reformers' mistake in focusing not on actual impropriety but on the appearance of impropriety, an appropriate standard for ensuring judicial impartiality but not for other settings where such neutrality is elusive. The result is ``a story of the substitution of appearances for substance, of technicalities for judgment, of opportunism for self-discipline.'' Among ethics controversies covered here are the scientific fraud charges against Nobel laureate Dr. David Baltimore and a colleague; Stanford University's accounting overcharges related to federal research grants; and Whitewater. Some conclusions are debatable (e.g., in criticizing costs incurred by independent counsels, the authors fail to note that many result from delaying tactics used by executive-branch targets). Many readers will also wish for deeper coverage of such fields as medicine and religion. However, reformers will be troubled by many implications of the regulations discussed here, including the ensnaring of ordinary citizens in the net of the government; apathy; and loopholes that enable politicians to circumvent rules. While too single-minded in its conclusions (haven't these ethics codes done any good?), this analysis offers disturbing reminders that ethicists need to think through the full consequence of their new rules.

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To these authors, contemporary scandals are tempests in ethical teapots that obscure the substance of unvirtuous public conduct. Guided by episodes taken from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and its appearance-versus-reality subject, Morgan and Reynolds energetically upbraid the "ethics establishment" that grew out of Watergate. Ineffective at rooting out substantive corruption, such as occurs in lobbying and campaign fund-raising, the ethical watchdogs--in the official bureaucracy, the press, and so-called public interest lobbies--fasten onto regulatory minutiae. Woe to the unwary so ensnared; even a Nobel Prize winner (David Baltimore) wasted 10 professional years defending himself and a colleague against a bogus scientific fraud allegation. Other examples the authors give, concerning plagiarism and election-posturing "anti-crime" legislation, are so deliciously preposterous that the reader is well primed for the concluding recommendations for reform. Presumably the authors would like to repeal the lot of post-Watergate enactments; instead they offer seven rules promoting ethical public behavior. A topical addition for active current-events collections. --Gilbert Taylor

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