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Events • April 17, 2006 

# *Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is against the Law* Cosponsored by the Fund for American Studies 

Since Enron’s collapse in 2002, the federal government has stepped up its campaign against white-collar crime. In *Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is against the Law*, John Hasnas compellingly illustrates how the campaign against corporate fraud has gone overboard. Hasnas debunks the common assumption that the law only mandates ethical behavior. That may have been true 20 years ago, but no longer. Hasnas points out that business executives have responsibilities to their stockholders, employees, customers, and suppliers. And in addition to their contractual obligations, CEOs have ordinary ethical obligations as human beings to honor their informal commitments. Those ethical complexities are rarely acknowledged by contemporary federal policies that demand compliance with myriad rules and regulations. The result is increasingly a Catch-22 situation in which businesspeople must act either unethically or illegally.

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##### [John Hasnas](/people/john-hasnas)

Professor of Ethics, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University; Executive Director, Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics