ECOA 2010 keynoter

From: RDShatt@aol.com
To: Criminal.Division@usdoj.gov
CC: aweissmann@jenner.com
Sent: 8/16/2010 7:52:39 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: For Mr. Greg Andres

Mr. Greg Andres,
Deputy Assistant Attorney General,
U.S. Department of Justice
Criminal Division 9
50 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Re: Your ECOA keynote presentation

Dear Mr. Andres

I am a non-credentialed layperson who has taken a significant interest in the business ethics field.

My focus has been propagating argumentation to the effect that class action lawsuits and other elements of the civil liability system undermine business ethics. You may find that argumentation set forth in this online article of mine: Does the Civil Liability System Undermine Business Ethics?

Both the criminal law and the civil law have potential for affecting corporate behavior, and further it seems to me the criminal law and civil law liability raise common questions about how they can be employed most effectively to improve corporate behavior, subject to the significant difference that civil law liability has a compensatory objective as well as a deterrence objective.

Business ethicists have paid a great deal of attention to how the criminal law is or should be applied to improve corporate behavior, but there seems to be a dearth of attention to the civil law. I tried to publish a scholarly article describing the foregoing situation with respect to the criminal law and the civil law and urging that much of the attention that has been given to the criminal law should be carried over to an evaluation of the civil law. I could not get my article published so I published it online myself. See this link Whither the Quest of Business Ethicists?

Your position as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division focuses you on the criminal law as a mechanism to improve corporate and individual behavior. I do not know how much you have ventured outside the criminal law in your thinking and considered the civil law, and whether you have attempted to utilize your knowledge and understanding of the criminal law in order to contemplate how well the civil law operates to improve corporate behavior, and whether any changes in the civil law would be desirable.

I hope you will, in connection with your presentation to the ECOA Ethics and Compliance Conference in September, take the time to read my above online articles and ascertain what you think about what I say in the articles in the context of what you propose to say in your keynote presentation.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Robert Shattuck

cc. Mr. Andrew Weissmann