Law Commons^™

Taking Responsibility, Robert M. Ackerman

Law Faculty Research Publications

Communitarians have suggested that a balance must be struck between individual rights and the public welfare, and that our self-seeking tendencies must sometimes be set aside in pursuit of the common good. Government is often (although not always) the mechanism through which common interests are advanced. An abdication of government responsibility may result in disaster, as was the case with respect to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. At the other extreme, the accumulation of too much power in government can also bring about catastrophic consequences, as in the case of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the Soviet Union. …