Today’s post comes from Prof. Thomas Merrill, who will be presenting at tomorrow’s Bryce Harlow Ethics and Lobbying Workshop.
Discussions of the moral responsibilities of lobbyists often start and end with legal 
obligations. Yet the law may well be problematic in many different ways: it may be the product of “regulatory capture,” short-sighted reform efforts, or even outright manipulation by interest groups. To navigate professional life successfully, then, we need to cultivate some sense of ethical virtues that go beyond merely “following the letter of the law.”
In this session we will discuss the U.S. Constitution and the political theory of the Federalist Papers as one example of how to think about that broader sense of ethical virtue. The Federalist Papers are based on a steely realism about the power of self-interest to lead to tyranny and an optimism that institutions can be designed to channel interests into the service of the public good. A good constitution recognizes that interests and interest groups will always be with us but can be made to check or restrain each other: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” One way the Constitution uses ambition to check ambition is by multiplying the number and kinds of interests and allowing them to compete with each other.
On this view, lobbying plays an important and necessary role in the constitutional order. The Federalist invites us, not to deny the reality of interests, but to elevate them and see them from the perspective of the overall constitutional order and the overall public good. It invites us to see lobbying, not as the crass pursuit of self-interest, but as a kind of statesmanship requiring virtues such as prudence, intelligence, and integrity.
