Summary
Engineers have a greater responsibility than many other professionals not to commit civil disobedience in performing their jobs as engineers. It does not follow that engineers have no responsibility for their company’s actions. Morally, engineer may be required to speak out within the company or even publicly against her company. An engineer may be required to work on a project or quit her job. None of these acts, generally, are against the law. An engineer may be morally required to commit civil disobedience as a private citizen. But, given the institutional character of engineering and the division of labor in the modern world, very rarely will conscience require an engineer to violate the law in the performance of her job as an engineer.
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Notes and References
See, for example, Rawls, John, “The Justification of Civil Disobedience,” originally presented to the American Political Science Association, September 1966, and reprinted in Richard Wasserstrom, ed. (1975)Today’s Moral Problems, MacMillan, New York, pp 346–358; Dworkin, Ronald (1977) “Civil Disobedience,” in hisTaking Rights Seriously, Harvard, Cambridge MA, USA and, of course, Plato’sCrito.
Schlossberger, Eugene (June 1989) “Civil Disobedience,”Analysis 49, pp. 148–153.
Dworkin, Ronald (1986)Law’s Empire, Harvard, Cambridge MA, USA.
Cf. Schlossberger, Eugene (1993)The Ethical Engineer, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, USA, pp. 114–117.
For discussions of this important issue, see Sclossberger, Eugene (1994)The Ethical Engineer, Temple University Press, Philadelphia;
Duska, Ronald (1989) “Whistleblowing II,” In Windt, Peter et al. eds.Ethical Issues in the Professions, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ; and
de George, Richard T. (1982)Business Ethics, MacMillan, New York.
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Schlossberger, E. Technology and civil disobedience: Why engineers have a special duty to obey the law. Sci Eng Ethics 1, 163–168 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02584072
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02584072