Legal Issues in Assigned Theory - Essay Example

Assigned Theory: Rights One of the theories we have learned concerns the right which claims that an individual has en ment to act or to do something in certain way. The rights consist of legal rights, moral rights and human rights. Legal rights are from the legal system. Legal rights are the entitlement that allows a person to do something in some certain ways or requires others to do something to that person in some certain ways. Moral rights or human rights come from moral principles that indicate that all human beings have entitlement to do something. The difference between legal right and moral right is that moral rights are unlimited in jurisdiction. A person cannot be tortured because one has moral rights. Immanuel Kant is a famous philosopher who proposed a theory named categorical imperative. Categorical imperative is based on the moral principle and it is like a command to tell people what can be done and what cannot. The theory claims that everyone is a free person who has moral right and correlative duty to be compared with another in this way. Kant proposed two formulations of categorical imperative. Kant gives us a term “maxim” which can be explained as follows: “A maxim for Kant is the reason a person in certain situation has for doing what he or she plans to do. A maxim would “become a universal law” if every person in a similar situation chose to do the same thing for the same reason.” (p99) According to the definition of maxim, we can understand the first formulation easily. First formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative is that we only can act according to the reasons that we want others to do the same toward us in a similar situation, which means transpositonal consideration. Furthermore, the action is morally right if a person acts by a reason to others in a certain situation that he or she has the willing to let others treat him or her in the same situation. If the person cannot have the willing to have others to act the same way that he or she acts towards others, the action is morally wrong. The first formulation has two criteria to estimate whether an action is morally right or wrong. The first criterion is universality that means “the person’s reasons for acting must be reasons that everyone could act on at least in principle.” (p99) The second criteria is reversibility that means “the person’s reasons for acting must be reasons that that person would be willing to have all others use, even as a basis of how they treat him or her” (p99). The second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative is that we cannot use individuals as a device to achieve our aims, but people can consent freely and rationally to help us. This formulation was proposed because of human beings’ dignity. The first formulation is equivalent to the second formulation because all men are equal. “Both formulations come down to the same thing: People are to treat each other as the beings that are equally free to pursue what they themselves choose to pursue.” (p101) This situation concerning Brenda Chaney’s firing is not ethical in this case. According to the case “Helping Patients at Plainfield Healthcare Center”, there is a law for nursing home in Indiana State, which claims that the residents in nursing home have right to “choose a personal attending physician and other providers of services” (p355). Moreover, Plainfield Healthcare Center has a policy that employers must honor residents’ request, whatever they request, including racial preferences in caretakers. I think nurses can honor residents’ requests and try doing their best to meet individual requirements, but not the impolite requests like the one in the case. Not only the white woman, Marjorie Latshaw, but also Brenda’s coworkers and managers treated her with racial prejudice because of her black skin. She was fired because her coworkers heart her say some bad words to the residents although the manager knew that was a lies. In the other words, Brenda was forced to be fired for no reason and forced to be banned taking care of the residents. This situation is not ethical according to the Kant’s theory and the two formulations of Kant’s categorical imperative. Marjorie Latshaw, the coworkers and managers should imagine that if they were black people who worked in the nursing house for the same reason, whether or not they would want themselves be treated the same way in the same situation. I promise they would not like others to treat them like Brenda was. If they do not like a person to act this way towards them, it is morally wrong and it is not ethical. According to the case, federal civil rights laws overrule the state law. Federal civil rights laws say that everyone has equal employment opportunity and the laws ban customer’s discrimination. Although the federal court admits the residents of nursing house have a right to choose their providers, like their own sex, but not their own race. Thus I think they also violate the law. The second formulation claims that they cannot use anyone not only as a means, but also an ends. The manager disobeys this formulation because the manager treats Brenda as means to achieve his ends. Conclusion Personally I think that their actions in this case is not ethical and the using the Right Theory to analyze this case is useful because they were not supposed to force Brenda to do something they do not want others to do concerning them. Everybody is free and equal to everybody else, which means that such thing as different skin color doesn’t make a human being less humane and less equal to people with another colors of skin. Hence the fact that Brenda was black didn’t give the coworkers, Marjorie Latshaw, and managers any rights to treat her in such discriminative way. Also, the positions neither of the state law nor of the federal law didn’t mention racial criterion in discerning of people’s rights, because judgment by racial characteristics are prohibited by human rights in general. That’s why there were no way for managers and Marjorie Latshaw even to consider the racial criterion regarding the situation, because it would be both unethical and violating in terms of human rights, established in all civilized societies worldwide. Moreover, judgments by the criteria of race reveal lack of moral culture and education of the participants of the situation that even considered Brenda through such humiliating lens. Kant’s categorical imperative is definitely a very suitable theory in consideration of this situation. The fact that the theory claims that people should do as they would be done by helps to understand how to walk in other’s shoes. Categorical imperative gives absolutely clear criteria of estimation of right and wrong actions which are applicable in this ethical case. According to the theory, such criterion as a person’s race cannot be even taken into consideration as it is not reasonable as a criterion at all. Hence, all the actions and decision concerning Brenda should be made on the basis whether Brenda was a good worker or not and whether she did anything objectively wrong. As far as she didn’t, she couldn’t be fired; and Kant’s theory and all its positions help to understand the right criteria of estimation of people’s actions as well as rationalize judgments of some people concerning others. Thus Kant’s theory was definitely useful an applicable concerning this ethical case. Read More