[...]... ideas of practice One visible sign of these developments has been the proliferation of codes of ethics or of professional conduct The drafting of such a code provides an opportunity for professionals to examine the nature and goals of their work, and offers information to others about what can be expected from them If a code has a disciplinary function, it may even offer protection to members of the. .. insolvency since the beginning of recorded legal history The early remedies for default were quite uniform: the law of Hammurab, the Twelve Tables of early Rome, and the laws of ancient Greece all placed both the property and the body of the debtor, as well as those of his kin, in the hands of the creditor.2 The ancient creditor had the right to enslave or even kill the insolvent If the creditors were... to normative conclusions However, the applied parts of the ethics of bankruptcy form a happy, self-supporting union on their own The potential schisms of the metaethical affair do not pose any danger to that harmony If my revision of Kant is dismissed, the ethics of bankruptcy loses an additive aimed at boosting its performance, but the rest of the demonstration for the practical conclusions remains... relevant to all professional groups, such as the nature of a profession, the function and value of codes of ethics, and the demands of confidentiality The subject matter of this volume, bankruptcy, raises issues common to a number of fields The topics covered include not only bankruptcy itself, clearly of importance in business ethics, but also punishment and corporate responsibility among others Its wider... have in mind in particular the reorganization schemes modelled after the US Bankruptcy Code Chapter 11 But, regardless of the institutional similarities, I find the ethical dilemmas of these schemes to be in a category of their own 8 The institution and the conflicts behind it Before going further, the use of concepts needs to be attended to As legal terms, the meanings of bankruptcy and ‘insolvency’... conflict by distributing the estate according to equitable principles The etymology of the word bankruptcy helps us to grasp better the emphasis of the first English legislation There are several accounts of the origins of the term, but they all agree that it was used initially around the Mediterranean to refer to traders who ran away from their debts.3 Some authors have claimed that the French expression... cases, the existence of insolvent corporations is terminated when bankruptcy proceedings are brought to an end, while individuals are no longer executed as part of the distribution of an estate I shall devote the lion’s share of my attention to personal bankruptcy because of the immediate and perplexing nature of the ethical controversies surrounding it: the insolvent has promised to pay the debt, nonetheless... some types of institutions and censure others We are led to a moral inquiry This study is a moral inquiry into the ethics of bankruptcy It examines the institutions that deal with insolvency The aim is to establish ethical guidelines as to what kind of bankruptcy laws we ought to have It is a task which falls under applied ethics, in particular business ethics, but the philosophical analysis of the basic... ethical trouble and its makers A perennial plague Chapter 1 The institution and the conflicts behind it The bulk of this work will focus on the bankruptcy of natural persons This leaves legal personalities, most notably corporations, to be dealt with in the final section The reason for the division derives from the ethical point of view of the study: the ethical problems relating to humans differ from those... Another source of concern, out of which emerged the insolvency proceedings in Roman law, was the conflict between creditors who pursued competing claims The 12 The institution and the conflicts behind it main purposes of a bankruptcy law are visible here On the one hand the law should protect the debtor from unjustified hardships; on the other hand it should protect creditors by enforcing their right . address themes relevant to all professional groups, such as the nature of a profession, the function and value of codes of ethics, and the demands of confidentiality. The. proliferation of codes of ethics or of professional conduct. The drafting of such a code provides an opportunity for professionals to examine the nature and goals of