Ethic Codes and Public Office

Abstract

An emergence of Ethics Codes and Codes of Conduct for public officers in the last two decades is a remarkable issue in the normative universe. In this paper, I will discuss some important aspects of these texts and documents, such as: (i) their rationale and their differences with profesional ethics in the private context; (ii) the realm of public ethics and the relation between ethical standards and legal norms, more specifically, how are posible conflicts between them to be deal with or how are ethical norms that reproduce or reiterate legal obligations to be understood; (iii) the most important ethical principles for public officials; and, finally (iv) an assessment of the arguments for and against this kind of codification. This analysis will focus –but not only– on texts and documents from EU (mainly Spain) and ANSEAN (mainly Philippines).