1st Edition
The Evolution of Ethics in America Standards Born of Crises
In this book, Laurence Armand French frames the emergence of medical, clinical, and legal ethical standards within the long history of institutional and systemic racial and gender biases in the United States. He explores the role that White privilege and elitism play in justifying long-held discriminatory practices ranging from the eugenics crusade a century ago to the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements of today. This book identifies and analyzes events highlighting systemic racism in the United States and explores how these events were exacerbated during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
The evolution of ethical standards in the United States is a reaction to long-held practices that discriminate against certain classes of people based on gender, age, and race and ethnicity. The White supremacist worldview contributed to systemic biases that directly affect people of color as well as women, and those biases, in turn, are inherent components of the social structure of economic, academic, and judicial institutions. This process impacts both procedural and social justice, the very foundation of ethical standards of which our Constitution is based. This work attempts to unravel the social and psychological aspects of human behavior contributing to this phenomenon.
This concise yet comprehensive book is a valuable resource to a broad audience, including students of criminal justice, as well as scholars, researchers, and professionals in both the social and physical sciences.
Chapter 1. Introduction
The Human Dynamics of Law, Ethics, and Morality
Contravening Ideological Perspectives and Moral Judgment
Chapter 2. Due Process: The Ethics of Social Justice
Genesis of Institutionalized Racism in America
The Adversarial Justice Model
Jim Crow Justice
Social Justice and Legal Ethics
Chapter 3. Informed Consent
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
American Eugenics Movement
Prisoners: Cheaper Than Chimpanzees
COVID and College Consent Contracting
Chapter 4. Duty to Disclose
Regulating Advances in Medicine
The Sampling Dilemma: Students, Prisoners, and Veterans
Case Study: The Boston VA Valproate Acid Experiment
The Opioid and Coronavirus Crises and Their Antecedents
Chapter 5. Duty to Warn and Report
The Duty to Warn: Exceptions to Client’s Right to Confidentiality
Duty to Report
Chapter 6. Cruel and Unusual
The Prevalence of Systemic Racism
International Conventions Against Torture
America’s Torturous History from the 1950s to Post-9/11/01
The Continued Use of Torture – The Gulf War Era
Chapter 7. Abuse of Privilege
Social Stratification and Elitism
Institutionalized and Systemic Sexism
Education and Privilege: The Socialization of the Elite
The Mechanism of Privilege and Entitlement
Privilege, Entitlement, and "Sexploitation"
Chapter 8. Ethics During the Trump Era
Introduction
Toward an Understanding of the Mechanism of Social Divisiveness
Ethical Consequences for Pathological Lying
Border Justice
The COVID Crises
Selected Bibliography
Index
Biography
Laurence Armand French has a Ph.D. in sociology (criminology)/social psychology from the University of New Hampshire-Durham; a postdoctorate in minorities and criminal justice education from SUNY-Albany; and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and measurement/cultural psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology from Western New Mexico University and is currently an affiliate professor of justice studies, college of liberal arts, University of New Hampshire. He has also taught at HBCU facilities (Prairie View A&M University; Grambling University) and is widely published in the areas of minorities and social justice.
