Taking the political context seriously: The proper role of ethics commissions

Ethics commissions, which are a type of government advisory commissions, give expert advice to governments on what policies to implement on pressing ethical matters, most often on bioethical issues. Besides recommending policies they are also often mandated to stimulate public debate. Discussions about the proper role of ethics commissions have not paid sufficient attention to the context that ethics commissions operate within. Instead, they have often been criticized by applying academic standards. This article seeks to rectify this by viewing these commissions as part of deliberative systems that should be evaluated on how well they fulfill their epistemic, ethical and democratic function. In the first part, I will elaborate on what ethics commission are and how they have been evaluated in the literature. In the second part, I go on to explore why it makes sense to view ethics commissions as part of deliberative systems and what implications this has for how we view their proper role. As part of this I will pay special attention to the question of whether ethics commissions are under the constraints of public reason, as this has been a central topic of discussion in the literature. In the third part, the implications will then be applied to the two parts of ethics commissions mandates: stimulating public debate and recommending policies. I will argue that ethics commissions most important role is moral cartography, and that this entails giving consideration to a range of views. Furthermore, I will argue that ethics commission operate in a certain time, place and political context and that this constrain the possible range of recommendations. One of these constraints is that the recommendations and their justification should conform to the requirements of public reason, although the moral cartography of the commission is not under the same constraints.