The last few years have brought an explosion of material available on the World Wide Web. Some of this relates directly to ethics, while other ancillary material offers invaluable support for those interested in contemporary moral issues. Let’s begin by looking at some of the resources that relate directly to ethics, and then turning to a consideration of other, supplementary resources. I will conclude with a few remarks on how these resources can be utilized in teaching contemporary moral issues courses.

Ethics centers on the World Wide Web typically offer a rich set of resources that combine the specific concerns of the center with the advantages of the web. Here are a few examples which typify the possibilities of the web-oriented center. This survey is by no means exhaustive, and new sites are continuing to come on-line.

One of the most extensive sites for ethics on the web is to be found at the Centre for Applied Ethics and the University of British Columbia. The web site has been set up by Chris MacDonald, a graduate student at UBC. The site features working papers from the Centre, schedules for lectures, information about the Centre, and--most extensive of all--a guide to applied ethics resources on the web, divided into sections on Biomedical & Health Care Ethics, Business Ethics, Computer & Information Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Ethical / Moral Decision Making, Media Ethics, Professional Ethics, Science & Technology Ethics, and Miscellaneous. There is also an extensive list of codes of professional ethics. This is one of the most helpful guides on the web, and the best place to start a research project on any of the topics covered by this site. There is also a section on "Featured Applied Ethics Web Sites," which highlights and describes a particular web site at irregular intervals.

The Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University is "a research and development environment that focuses on teaching people practical methods for analyzing and responding to real ethical problems. The Center's members combine knowledge and experience from different areas: interactive multimedia, business and professional ethics, and conflict resolution." It contains information about Project THEORIA and other multimedia interactive projects for experiential learning in ethical issues. Of particular interest is the link to "A Right to Die? The Case of Dax Cowart," an interactive CD-ROM by David Andersen, Robert Cavalier, and Preston K. Covey.

The Center for Professional and Applied Ethics is maintained by Drs. Ari Santas and Ron Barnette at Valdosta State University. It is also the link for the CPAE list server—an excellent ethics resource. Be sure to visit Zeno’s Coffeehouse when you’re there!

The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania is a rich and very well structured resource. Its opening screen offers visitors options to learn more about the Center, to learn about its faculty, to see an introduction to bioethics by Glenn McGee and Art Caplan and other resources in "Bioethics for Beginners," to connect to the Global Conversation on Ethics and Genetics, the AMA, and to a "Fireside Chat: Genetics and Ethics Internet Course." This site also contains an excellent list of journals, networks, and bioethics associations in the U.S. and Canada. The papers which are available on the Ethics and Genetics page are strong philosophical pieces with solid and incisive commentaries. This is a superb site, exceptionally well presented and rich with content.

The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago offers ethics consultation and ethics education for the University of Chicago Medical School and its hospitals as well as the larger community. In addition to this, it has a superb set of links to bioethics resources, end of life issues, medical resources, legal resources, and health care reform. Anyone researching any of these topics can save countless hours by beginning with this site.

The National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico offers an excellent selection of resources. This includes "Genetic Odyssey: A Monthly Exploration of Genetic Topics." Past topics include Biotechnology and Food Production, Colon Cancer, Diabetes, Genetic Cloning, Genetic Privacy, Breast Cancer and BRCA 123, and Alzheimer's Disease and Genetics. It also contains an extensive set of educational resources, including links to some of the Kennedy Institute's Scope Notes Series and its Bibliography of Bioethics, and guides to other web sites dealing with genetic research and applications. There is also an excellent collection of links to resources dealing with the social implications of genetic technologies.

Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, directed by Caroline Whitbeck at MIT, hosts a very interesting and well-developed web site that offers extensive resources in research ethics, engineering ethics cases, moral leaders, ethics in a corporate setting, ECSEL Information and Resources for Reducing the Barriers to Minorities & Women in Engineering, Ethics Codes and Guidelines, selected on-line essays, and instructional resources. Although this site only began in 1996, it is already very "deep" in the sense that there are several layers of material present under each major heading.

Supported by an NSF grant, the Ethics Center has as its mission "to provide engineers, scientists, science and engineering students with resources useful for understanding and addressing ethically significant problems that arise in their work life. The Center is also intended to serve teachers of engineering and science students who want to include discussion of ethical problems closely related to technical subject as a part of science and engineering courses, or in free-standing subjects in professional ethics or in research ethics for such students."

One of the hallmarks of the site is the use of the case-study method. The Research Ethics section, for example, contains five subdivisions, and there are ten excellent case studies and scenarios under just one of those subdivisions.

Perhaps the most innovative feature of this site is its section on "Moral Leaders." Although at present there are only three profiles here—Rachel Carson, Roger Boisjoly, and William LeMessurie—this promises to be an excellent set of case studies in what one might call "the virtuous scientist."

The Center also publishes an on-line Newsletter at irregular intervals.

The Center for Environmental Philosophy at the University of North Texas is the home of the journal Environmental Ethics. Under the leadership of Eugene C. Hargrove, the Center publishes both Environmental Ethics and a book series entitled Environmental Ethics Books. It also runs workshops and conferences and promotes graduate and postgraduate work in environmental ethics. On the Web, it makes information about its programs available and provides the tables of contents for all issues of Environmental Ethics and gives short descriptions of the books in its series. Also at the University of North Texas is the International Society for Environmental Ethics. Its Newsletter is available on-line, and it offers an excellent collection on bibliographical resources. There is a section on "Selected Books and Articles," which contains pages on anthologies, systematic works, ecotheology, and other subject bibliographies. The ISEE Bibliography is fully searchable and very well constructed. This is a superb resource. It also has a Syllabus Project, containing numerous links to several dozen environmental ethics courses and environmental philosophy courses.

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University provides an excellent example of how a web site can be used to bring together various campus activities and link them to a larger national context. The site contains the full collection of Issues in Ethics, the quarterly publication of this Center. Several case studies are presented, and visitors are given the opportunity both to make comments on the cases and to read the comments of others. It also has a very good set of links to other sites, including very helpful reviews of their content. There is also plenty of information about SCU's course offerings on ethics, conferences, etc. This is a very well done model of how a web site can be used to pull together a number of different aspects of a campus's concern for ethics. All of this is presented in an excellent format with a very well crafted web interface.

Ethics Updates. This is a site which I established in 1995 simply to keep the bibliographical essays in a couple of my ethics books up-to-date. One thing led to another, as it usually does on the Web, and gradually it has developed into a set of web-based resources on a series of contemporary moral issues (abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, etc.) and on topics in moral theory (utilitarianism, Kant, Aristotle, etc.). In organizing material, I have continually asked myself what students (and, secondarily, instructors) would find helpful in approaching a given topic. I have tried whenever possible to provide links to web-based resources of very high quality. In addition, there are resources on journals in ethics, on-line books, syllabi, etc. Most recently, I have added a series of Ethics Discussion Forums, which I hope to use as a forum for international discussions of contemporary moral issues.

Codes of Ethics. For a good collection of codes of ethics as well as material on a variety of areas in applied ethics (including military ethics, movie and TV ethics, sports ethics, governmental ethics), see Ethics on the World Wide Web at the School of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. For codes of ethics relating to engineering and science, see those collected at the Ethics Center for Engineering and Science at MIT. The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago site maintains an excellent collection of clinical codes, physician codes and oaths, nursing codes and oaths, and other professions’ codes of ethics. It also contains resources on religious bioethics in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity.

Since 1994 several journals have appeared on-line. Some are electronic versions of their printed counterparts; some are new creations that happen to be on the web but are still traditional in their structure and format; and a few are web-based creations that utilize the unique strengths of the web to do things that would not have been possible in traditional print media.

BEARS. Philosophy, Plato taught us, is a conversation, and BEARS shows some of the potential that the web has for encouraging that conversation. When this conversation occurs in printed journals, however, the conversation usually proceeds at a snail's pace. It often takes a year or more for a reply to appear in a print journal, and the rejoinder may appear one or two issues after that. The promise of web-based communications has been that it could drastically reduce the amount of time between each contribution to the discussion.

BEARS, the Brown Electronic Articles Review Service in Moral and Political Philosophy, is edited by David Estlund and James Dreier at Brown University's Department of Philosophy. Initially, BEARS just provided on-line reviews of articles that had appeared in print journals. The reviews are of very high quality, and they focus on important articles. Bryan Van Norden, for example, has a review of Julia Annas's "Prudence and Morality in Ancient and Modern Ethics;" Paul Weithman reviews Cheshire Calhoun's "Standing for Something;" and Mark van Roojen has a review of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit's "Moral Functionalism And Moral Motivation." Frank Jackson then provided a reply to van Roojen. The original article by Jackson and Pettit appeared in the January, 1995 issue of The Philosophical Quarterly; van Roojen's review appeared in March of the same year, and Jackson's reply in September. The is a good example of the way in which a web-based publication can facilitate philosophical dialogue.

This year the editors have taken this a step further, presenting several symposia on articles. In November, 1996, BEARS published a symposium on Ronald Dworkin's "Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It," which had appeared in Philosophy & Public Affairs in Spring 1996. The commentators were Simon Blackburn, Michael Otsuka, Nicholas Zangwill. In August, 1996, BEARS presented a symposium on Thomas Hurka's "Monism, Pluralism, and Rational Regret" (Ethics, April 1996) with contributions from Richard Brook, Brad Hooker, Robert Johnson, Michael Stocker, and Alison McIntyre. An added feature of this conversation is that a link is given to each participant's e-mail address so that the conversation can be continued on an individual basis.

Ethics and Genetics: A Global Conversation. Glenn McGee, at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has led the way in creating a model web site, one that shows the true potential of this medium. McGee designed the first U.S. philosophy department web site while at the University of Massachusetts liberal arts college at Dartmouth, then convinced the University of Chicago to include an early version of the "ethics and genetics" experiment in the ENIAC of web philosophy, The Chicago Philosophy Project. At Penn, the ethics and genetics site has grown to be the best known of a ten-part bioethics/philosophy of biology web program that includes a student section (Bioethics for Beginners), two list-servers (PHILCLUB, the international undergraduate philosophy list; and FIRESIDE CHAT, a new web-based philosophy of biology chat room), and a virtual library complete with direct access to all major philosophy search engines on the web. In the "ethics and genetics conversation," the dialogue model of philosophy emerges most clearly through the skillful use of web-based technology. This site is part journal, part discussion group--and combines the best of both. The full text of articles is available on-line for all to read. (Currently there are eight articles available.) Simply click on the title to see the full text of the article. Authors are listed, and a click on an author's name take you to that individual's home page, usually with an e-mail link, a list of publications, and even ordering information for that person's books. Finally, there is a discussion group for each article. Click on each and you can see the comments that participants have made on that particular article. There is an e-mail link for each contributor to the discussion, so a single click allows one to send e-mail to that person as well. One of the dangers of completely open discussion groups is that the level of knowledge of the participants can vary greatly. The Ethics and Genetics project has struck a nice balance in this regard. "Those with documented writing and research interests in genetics are encouraged to join the group's discussion faculty; students and others may serve as associate discussants." Thus anyone gets to read the discussion; many can be on the list server; and those with an appropriate background can participate. The "conversation" has so far served as the basis of or part of more than a dozen courses in the U.S., Australia, Israel, Great Britain, and Croatia. Special arrangements for web courses are available by contacting the Penn Center for Bioethics.

Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which is co-edited by Charles Prebish and Damien Keown with Wayne Husted as Technical Editor, is an outstanding example of how well an on-line journal can be presented. The Journal contains original articles, book reviews, and assorted announcements. It is possible to subscribe to on-line delivery, or to read the journal on its web site. In addition to current and back issues of the Journal, the site contains scholarly resources on Buddhism, the Pali canon on-line, on-line conferences, and assorted other resources. The on-line conferences, which can last up to two weeks, are excellent examples of scholarly exchanges. The 1995 conference on "Buddhism and Human Rights" contained ten papers and probably several hundred messages. This is an excellent example of how a web site and e-mail can be used to coordinate a virtual conference.

Online Journal of Ethics, edited at DePaul University’s Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, is devoted to business and professional ethics. Typical articles include "Macro and Micro: The Emerging Field of Organizational Ethics," by Charles M. Horvath; "Teaching Business Ethics Through Literature," by Jon M. Shepard, Michael G. Goldsby & Virginia W. Gerde; and "The Ethics of Handwriting Analysis in Pre-Employment Screening," by Daryl Koehn. Currently fewer than a dozen articles are available on-line.

Electronic Journal of Analytical Philosophy. The first issue of the EJAP was published in 1993, and it was the first electronic journal in philosophy. The journal is edited by Craig de Lancey at Indiana University. Although it is not directly primarily toward ethics, it is a true web-based journal that provides full text of all articles on the web. Issue 3 (Spring, 1995) is devoted to the topic of justifying value in nature, and contains several articles that deal with issues in ethics.

Science and Engineering Ethics. Edited by Stephanie J. Bird (MIT) and Raymond Spier (Surrey University), this journal is published in paper format but tables of contents and abstracts are available on the web. The journal began in 1995, and provides very high quality articles on topics in engineering ethics and in teaching ethics to scientists and engineers.

One of the best collections on on-line philosophical texts is to be found at Carnegie-Mellon University. The Virtual Library of the University of Bristol maintains a collection of electronic texts. Valdosta State University's index of Philosophy electronic texts. Mary Mallery maintains a Directory of Electronic Text Centers at Rutgers University.

For those interested in classical Greek philosophy, the Perseus Project at Tufts University provides an incomparable resource and a model for how to do critical editions on the web. For any text available, readers can see an English translation, a transliteration of the original Greek, or—after downloading the appropriate font—the Greek text in the original characters. Clicking on a Greek word takes the reader to the Liddell-Scott Intermediate Greek Lexicon, an excellent classical Greek dictionary for scholars. Clicking on hyperlinks in the English translation takes the reader to a classical encyclopedia, which contains about three hundred articles written expressly for the Perseus Project as well as about 3,500 entries from Herodotus and Apollodorus and the Frazer edition of Pausanias. Where appropriate, the link will also take the reader to maps, sculpture, vases, coins, and architectural sites.

I hope that eventually there will be similar sites for other texts in the history of moral philosophy. For example, it would be wonderful to have a similar bi-lingual edition of Kant’s works in moral philosophy, with a German critical edition and a look-up feature for any German word that not only gave standard German meanings (« la Duden or Wildhagen) but also indexed all other uses of that word by Kant. The English text could be linked so that a click on a word would show the reader what the original German term was, and hyperlinks to key secondary literature would provide readers with useful commentary. References given in footnotes to Kant’s various works in article in Kant-Studien and in the Erg¬ nzungshefte. Commentaries, such as Wolff’s and Paton’s, could also be coordinated. Such a project would be massive but of great value to scholars.

A number of Kant’s works in moral philosophy are available on-line, including:

Having an electronic syllabus for a course can be simply silly. There's nothing more annoying that having to click on a computer and log onto a network in order to look at a schedule that you could otherwise consult if you simply opened a file folder or notebook in your briefcase. (Of course, this presumes that you can find the folder--all too often a false assumption in my own case!) Id an electronic syllabus is to be genuinely useful, it must offer several improvements not available with the standard paper syllabus.

What might these advantages be? I see several possibilities. First, the syllabus might contain (through hyperlinks) the actual reading assignments themselves, not just a mention of what they are. Second, the syllabus might contain (again, through links) additional resources that could fall into the traditional category of "recommended readings," the kind of materials we often place on room reserve in the library for a particular course. Third, the syllabus might contain (again, through links) computer-based activities that are part of the course. In logic, links to specific computer-based homework exercises would be an obvious example. Fourth, the syllabus can also contain a link to a grade sheet, with students listed either by an alias or a student number. Finally, syllabi can contain links to discussion forums. Indeed, an assignment can be posting a position paper on a class discussion forum and responding to two other such position papers that have already been posted.

Stephen Darwall's Not-Yet-Cool Home Page contains several syllabi which provide excellent examples of how ethics courses can be presented on the web. For example, Phil. 361, a course in Philosophical Ethics, contains links to major works in ethics that are available on-line and on on-line course schedule that not only contains the course assignments, study guides, etc., but also the outline of Darwall's lectures. In his course on Contemporary Moral Issues, Darwall has numerous links to web resources on specific topics (such as abortion and affirmative action) that supplement required readings. There is even an on-line version of the Prisoners' Dilemma that you can play in either cooperative or competitive mode--a good example of the way a syllabus can integrate an activity. For another example of a syllabus in Political Philosophy that also builds in links to the course lectures and the readings, see James Schmidt's PO291: Introduction to Political Philosophy at Boston University.

In addition to the resources discussed above, which relate directly to ethics, there are a number of other resources on the Web that provide excellent supplementary materials to anyone working on contemporary moral issues. Here are a few of the most useful.

Supreme Court. Most court decisions are easily available on the web. Supreme Court decisions since 1990 are available at the Cornell School of Law site, as well as 300 historic decisions (such as Roe v. Wade) prior to 1990. Many earlier decisions (7,400) are now on-line from FedWorld. Both sites offer searches according to topic as well as case name or number. The Cornell site offers far better html formatting than the FedWorld site. FindLaw now offers all Supreme Court decisions back to 1937.

In addition to the text of the Supreme Court decisions, audio recordings of the oral arguments are now available from Oyez Oyez Oyez, a superb web site maintained at Northwestern University through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Students can hear the "give and take" of arguments before the Court in a way that had previously been either impossible or very difficult. The site uses RealAudio, a streaming audio server that plays at the same time that it downloads. Thus there is no need to wait a long time for a large file to download—just click and it will begin playing as it continues to download additional material. The RealAudio player, which works with most major web browsers, is available for free downloading. Listeners only need a sound card and a 14.4 connection for AM radio quality sound, 28.8 for CD quality sound. Further enhancements to this site are planned in the near future.

Several of these sites also contain additional resources on the court, such as biographical information about the Justices. In addition to these sources, the Washington Post maintains an excellent set of resources on the Court, especially its "Inside the Supreme Court" by Joan Biskupic, the Post’s legal correspondent.

U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. Recent U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions are also available on the web, although each circuit maintains its own decisions. A comprehensive list of links to the particular circuits is available from the Federal Judicial Center. The Federal Court Locator at Villanova University provides a map that displays the various federal districts. Indeed, the Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy contains an excellent collection of government-related resources and links.

The best source of information about legislation on the national level is Thomas, the Web site of the United States Congress. It offers easy searching facilities, a topics index for the present and previous session of Congress, the full test of the Congressional Record since 1993, committee reports, and a few historical documents. In addition to this, it not only contains links to other branches of the federal government, but also state and local government information. Although it may not give you all the information you need, Thomas will probably point you in the correct direction.

Several of the major daily newspapers are now available on line, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. In addition to this, Time Magazine, CNN, and various other news organizations maintain web sites.

Among the monthly magazines, the Atlantic Monthly stands out in a class by itself. It provides a model of what web-based publishing should be like. Drawing on over a century of high quality articles, the editors of the on-line version of the Atlantic have put together a site of amazing strength. For example, it has a superb collection of original articles on race and related issues by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as more recent articles by Claude Steele, Robert Coles, Daniel Moynihan, Nicholas Lemann, Elijah Anderson, Stanley Fish, Juan Williams, and Thomas Edsall. The Boston Review is now on the web, and it contains some excellent articles and discussions, including pieces on race, welfare, and the environment.

One of the best news resources on the web these days is Ray Suarez’s "Talk of the Nation" on National Public Radio. Suarez offers the most intelligent talk radio program on national radio today. Many of his topics touch on contemporary moral issues such as the right to die, capital punishment, abortion, and gay rights. He often has philosophers as guests. For example, he has had three recent shows on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and guests have included Margaret Battin, Ira Bylock, Dr. Timothy Quill, and Dr. Stephen Jamison; shows on reproductive technologies and cloning have included Art Caplan, Ruth Macklin and Glenn McGee. Again, these are available on RealAudio.

Finally, PBS’s series Frontline has complemented its television programs with a series of web sites that contain both materials from a particular show and other, supplementary web-based resources. It has sites on Kevorkian and physician-assisted suicide, capital punishment and "Dead Man Walking," breast implants, the Holocaust, "Murder on ‘Abortion Row’" the Tailhook issue and gender equity in the Navy, adoption, and smoking and the tobacco industry. All offer excellent complements to traditional text-based materials in a moral problems course.

Taken together, these resources provide a powerful array of sources to complement traditional textbook materials. They can be employed like room-reserve materials have been used in the past, and students can be directed to them just as they used to be directed toward the reserve desk in the library.

Imagine you are offering a course in contemporary moral problems, and next week you intend to discuss the issue of euthanasia and end-of-life decisions. You would probably want to have your students read some court decisions. As of this writing, Quill v. Vacco and Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington are both before the Supreme Court; as soon as the Court renders its decision, it will be available for students to read on the web. The court of appeals decisions are already available, as are a number of the friend of the court briefs. Or you might want your students to read a classic case such as Cruzon v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (1990). On the web, student can even hear the oral arguments with Kenneth Starr and William Colby as the principal attorneys. Legislative information is easily available, including the text of things such as the Oregon Death with Dignity Act and transcripts of hearings and the final report (June, 1995) of the Senate Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Statistical information about American attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide is also easily available. Various religious documents, including papal encyclicals, are also on-line. Codes of ethics, include religious codes for Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, are available from the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. Talk of the Nation shows, hosted on NPR by Ray Suarez, are available on physician-assisted suicide, and include as guests Dr. Ira Bylock, Professor Margaret Battin, Dr. Herbert Hendin, and Dr. Stephen Jamison—all on RealAudio. Frontline, the PBS documentary series, has an excellent Web-based segment on Kevorkian, including RealAudio recordings from Kevorkian and three people who eventually were assisted in their death by him; there are also interviews with Dr. Timothy Quill and Professor Arthur Caplan. Ezekiel Emanuel’s "Whose Right to Die?", which just appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in March, 1997, is also available in full-text for students to read on the web. Perhaps one of the readings in your course is from Ronald Dworkin’s Life’s Dominion; if so, you might well want to direct your students to read the review of that book by Laurence Tribe in the New York Times Book Review.

The web is particularly useful for late-breaking issues. For example, when the case of Dolly the cloned sheep hit the news, I was able within two days to put on virtual reserve an extensive set of resources for students in my contemporary moral problem course. In addition to several articles in The Washington Post, I was able to provide links to two Talk of the Nation Shows, which include interviews with Arthur Caplan, Director, Center of Bioethics and Trustee Professor of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania; Gladys White, National Board of Ethics and Reproduction; Dr. Thomas Murray, Center for Bioethics at Case Western Reserve; Dr. Ruth Macklin, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; and Glenn McGee, University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics. In addition to this, I could post a link to an extensive bibliography on cloning at the Georgetown University Kennedy Center for Ethics as well as to several other articles dealing with cloning. A few days later, I could add a link to the Time Magazine issue on cloning, which included half a dozen different articles on cloning.

All of this takes time, of course, but it also takes time to xerox the same material and bring it over to the library and put it on reserve. Moreover, the quality of what one is able to provide, especially the color photographs and the RealAudio recordings, are beyond what one could usually provide with xerox copies. However, the mechanics of developing web pages have become increasingly easy, and now it is not much more difficult than word processing. Nor do such web pages have to be beautiful. They can simply consist of a title and a series of links. Many editors, such as Microsoft’s FrontPage, even make this an easy task. As more material is placed on the Web, this will become an increasingly powerful tool.