AQU Catalunya's new Code of Ethics: an opportunity
As a lawyer and an expert in criminal law, I have been trained in the principles that regulate certain types of behaviour and protect what are considered to be certain fundamental legal assets that, if they are not respected, result in the punishment of whoever infringes the rules and/or regulations. When the first codes of ethics appeared they proved to be overly similar to laws and regulations in that they attempted to regulate certain types of behaviour to the point of case-based reasoning, or casuistry. This was in part due to the fact that applied ethics as a discipline was still underdeveloped in Spain.
In the 1970s a new discipline in the field of ethics, known as applied ethics, appeared in the US. As the name indicates, it was a movement linked to specific situations that arose as a result of the need to deal with real-world actions (and their moral considerations) in professional practice that are not necessarily governed by law.
Bioethics is probably one of the more well-known fields in this discipline as it is directly linked to specific situations in the field of health in which many people have found themselves faced either directly or indirectly with ethical dilemmas. By now, however, it has spread to all professional sectors, ranging from private enterprise to public service. Esther Giménez-Salinas - Director, Chair of Social and Restorative Justice, Pere Tarrés Foundation, Ramon Llull University (URL)