Stuart P . Green , Lying , cheating , and stealing : a moral theory of white - collar crime

white-collar law can be clarified by analysing the way in which it reflects our moral thinking. For example, crimes that seem to involve only a disregard for the law itself and whose wrongfulness is not otherwise apparent, can be shown to involve a genuine form of moral wrongdoing: they are a form of disobedience. Drawing primarily upon US statutes and legal disputes (with some UK material thrown in for good measure) Green tries to show that the law closely tracks various fine-grained moral distinctions of a familiar, everyday sort. The book sets out this argument in three discrete parts. Part One looks at the question of how we define white-collar crime and favours a focus upon acts (i.e. offences) rather than the social class of offenders, their manner of deviance or their resort to guile. (Each of these options has shortcomings that are well tackled.) What these acts are taken to have in common is not any single essential feature that is present in all cases, but rather a (Wittgensteinian) family resemblance. The acts in question are perjury, fraud, false statements, obstruction of justice, bribery, extortion and blackmail, insider trading, tax evasion and some regulatory offences. The list is not meant to be exhaustive or beyond question but is a working cluster that allows Green to make his larger point. Once specified, exploration of their moral content has to wait upon the exploration of moral wrongfulness in Part Two. Wrongfulness, in the sense that interests Green, is understood not in terms of the violation of rights but in terms of the violation of everyday norms. That is to say, he focuses upon thick moral concepts rather than labelling of acts as permissible and transgressive, allowed and wrong. This is one of the great strength’s of Green’s text. It tries to keep its exploration of normativity resolutely close to our familiar but finely nuanced everyday moral evaluations.