Commentary: Calling the Question: The Need for an ASPA Code of Ethics

• Date: 01 September 2014
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12259
• Author: James M. Grant

Calling the Question: The Need for an ASPA Code of Ethics 569

Commentary

James M. Grant is a career public

administrator with the City of Los Angeles,

currently assigned to the Los Angeles Police

Department as a crime and intelligence

analyst. He holds a certif‌i cate in crime

and intelligence analysis from the State

of California Department of Justice. He

received a bachelor’s degree from the

University of California, Santa Barbara, in

1977 and a master of public administration

degree from California State University,

Long Beach, in 1993.

E-mail: jamesmgrant@earthlink.net

James M. Grant

City of Los Angeles

If there can be a Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, then why can’t there be an ASPA Code

of Ethics?  at may be the only question not

asked in James H. Svara’s cogent article, “Who

Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and

Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public

Administration.” Svara provides a thoughtful dis-

course on the history of the American Society for

Public Administration (ASPA), ethics codes, and

public administration in general.

I wonder whether the society’s alleged disdain for such

codes harkens back to the McCarthy era, when public

employees at all levels were routinely required to

deny af‌f‌i liation with the Communist Party and other

organizations believed to be plotting the overthrow

of the U.S. government from within its shores. (At

one point, the NAACP and the B’nai Brith Anti-

Defamation League were thought to be such organiza-

tions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.)  ose

who refused were summarily dismissed from employ-

ment or denied hiring.

Watergate purportedly triggered the creation of an

ASPA ethics code. John Ladd’s 1980 argument that,

in Svara’s words, “ethics cannot be set by f‌i at; hav-

ing a code conf‌l icts with the notion of ethics itself ”

may have prevailed. In any event, one can reason-

ably assert that ethics has not been at the top of any

discipline’s course list.  e idea that ethics is innate in

individuals has been both supported and refuted by

history. For example, in places as diverse as Germany,

Cambodia, and Rwanda, public administrators

actively planned the genocide of members of their

Calling the Question:  e Need for an ASPA Code of Ethics

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp. 569–570. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12259.