4.2 Value profile: responsibility  (Page 4/10)

An interesting debate has developed in the field of engineering ethics about standards of due care. Larry May sets forth a standard of minimal care which is a threshold below which an engineer cannot fall without incurring negligence. While the law is adept at establishing a minimal level of acceptable care, engineers as professionals should be held to higher standards. Hence, Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins in an influential textbook on engineering ethics, Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, argue for higher standards of care such as normal or reasonable care, good works, and exemplary care. Engineers should be encourage to explore higher levels of care and responsibility; but this is held back by the specter of blame. It is certainly appropriate to hold engineers responsible and blameworthy for failure to live up to minimum standards of care and practice. But above this level, when should blame drop out. Certainly engineers who fall below reasonable or normal standards exhibit moral deficiency. (The term comes from Ladd.) But what about taking on tasks that are above and beyond the call of duty? Suppose an engineer elects not to bring about a good work or make a substantial self-sacrifice to obtain a community good. Certainly such an action cannot be blameworthy since it falls well above the minimum threshold of acceptable practice. Nor does it seem to admit of moral deficiency. Hence, as responsibility is projected into increasingly positive and supererogatory space, what terms should we employ to replace blame, punishment, and moral deficiency? See Martin Curd and Larry May, "Professional Responsibility for Harmful Actions" in Module Series in Applied Ethics , Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology Kendall/Hunt, 1984. See also Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases , Chapter 5.

Criminal responsibility

• This area of the law applies to human individuals.
• To prevail in a criminal trial, one must first prove mens rea or a guilty mind. This is essentially an intention to break the law, to commit the crime in question.
• It is also necessary to prove that the target of a criminal suit have actually committed the guilty, law-breaking action, termed an actus reus .
• Finally, it is necessary to prove that the mens rea caused and guided the execution of the actus reus

Back to o.j. simpson

• Reflecting on the trial of O.J. Simpson can help distinguish burden of proof in a civil and criminal law. Burden of proof is what the plaintiff has to prove to prevail against the accused or defendant. In a criminal trial, the burden of proof is set quite high. (Why do you suppose this would be?) The prosecution has to prove the defendant guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." It is lower in a civil trial where the plaintiff only has to prove the case against the defendant by establishing a "preponderance of evidence." This is largely quantative; if 51% of the evidence falls on the side of the plaintiff, then the case against the defendant stands.
• OJ Simpson was found innocent in the criminal trial. The prosecutors were unable to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
• But in the civil trial, his accusers were able to accumulate a preponderance of evidence against him. The difference in burden of proof thus explains why Simpson lost the civil trial but won the criminal trial.