by Peter W. Morgan

About the author: Peter W. Morgan is a partner at the law firm of Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin in Washington, D.C.

If our experience with the long list of ethics investigations over the past two decades teaches anything, it teaches that while the post-Watergate ethics reforms have yielded substantial benefits, they have also exacted significant costs. Much of the discussion of these costs has focused upon the mistreatment of officials in individual cases or, more generally, the extent to which we may be discouraging qualified persons from entering public service. Less attention has been paid to some of the adverse effects these reforms have had on the way government operates. The following discussion considers a few of these effects. By way of background, the discussion first briefly reviews the post-Watergate...