Democratic governance and the ethics of market compliance

The “question of reasonable compliance” concerns how business firms should comply with morally reasonable laws that have been democratically enacted. This article argues that, out of respect for the governing authority of democratic citizens, firms should comply with the law in accordance with legislators’ normative expectations of compliance. It defends this view against arguments from the legal, economic and business ethics literatures that focus on the contentious nature of democracy and the competitive nature of the market. In response this article argues that these adversarial features of democracy and capitalism do not limit the ability of democratic legislatures to set normative expectations of market actors, nor the duty of firms to comply with them.