Event Report  International Exchange

CIGS Seminar:"Rethinking of Compliance: "Do Legal Institutions Require Virtuous Practitioners?""

November 2, 2012, 14:30 - 16:30
Venue: CIGS Meeting Room 3

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(Mr. Jun Kurihara, Prof. Kenneth Winston from the left)


Seminar's outline
Title: "Rethinking of Compliance: "Do Legal Institutions Require Virtuous Practitioners?""
Speaker: Prof. Kenneth Winston  Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School
Moderator: Mr. Jun Kurihara, Research Director, CIGS

Abstruct
In the curriculum at the Harvard Kennedy School, we assume we have a settled understanding of which skills and capacities practitioners need (and thus should be trained in) to act competently in public life.
However, in ethics, at least, such agreement cannot be presupposed. In this talk, Prof. Winston poses the core question as to what the moral competence of practitioners consist in and suggest two approaches for addressing it. One focuses on different roles that practitioners play in legal institutions. Here the theme is the interplay between institutional structures and moral virtues. The second approach identifies certain generic competences (virtues) that cut across different roles and thus serve as critical skills for all practitioners in public life, whatever their institutional setting.

Speaker's Profile
Mr. Kenneth Winston, Lecturer in Ethics, teaches practical and professional ethics. He created the Kennedy School's course in professional ethics for mid-career students, which has been offered since 1986. Mr. Winston is also faculty chair of the Kennedy School's Singapore Program, which supports faculty exchanges with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. In recent years, he helped to build HKS's capacity in comparative and international ethics, developing new cases and teaching in overseas venues, especially in Asia. Mr. Winston has written extensively on case teaching, professional ethics, and legal theory. He holds degrees in philosophy from Harvard College and Columbia University, and has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a senior research fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a John Dewey Senior Fellow.