Home > Uncategorized > Politics, ethics and the law

Politics, ethics and the law

December 11th, 2008 Bryn Williams-Jones

In today’s Jerusalem Post, there’s an article about moves by the Israeli Justice Ministry to clarify what constitutes a conflict of interest, in light of the recent scandal involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The problem seems to be that existing laws are not clear about what constitutes a COI. This lead State Attorney Moshe Lador to halt legal proceedings against Olmert because of insufficient evidence.

Lador wrote, “Even though the fact that three people had personal connections with Olmert and this increases, to some extent, the force of the conflict of interest in which the prime minister was involved, it does not seem that it is enough to create the ‘aggravating aspect’ that turns a conflict of interest into a criminal act.

“In other words, even though we are confronted with an aggregate of conflicts of interest – each of which does not create criminal responsibility by itself – the aggregate weight is also insufficient to establish the critical mass of conflict of interest to the degree of gravity that is sufficient, by itself, to constitute injury to the public that reaches the level of a criminal act.”

But this legal interpretation masks the broader, substantive negative impact of COI on public confidence, especially when it involves a sitting Prime Minister! As noted by Hebrew University criminal law professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, who is quoted further on in the Post article, State Attorney Lador missed the point:

Kremnitzer quoted Lador as saying that Olmert’s action did not harm the values of ethical conduct, public confidence in government or proper government behavior in a “substantial” way.

“What does “substantial” mean”? Kremnitzer asked. “Lador writes that Olmert caused harm to public confidence in the government and that he deviated from the straight and narrow path. In my opinion, that is very substantial.”

Tags:
Comments are closed.