No One Profits from Their Own Wrong
mental-model
Source: Governance
Categories: law-and-governanceethics-and-morality
From: A Selection of Legal Maxims
Transfers
The Latin maxim nullus commodum capere potest de injuria sua propria — no one should profit from their own wrong — expresses a foundational principle of system design: if bad actors can convert rule-breaking into advantage, the rules become self-defeating. The principle operates not just in law but in any rule-governed system where compliance is voluntary and enforcement is imperfect.
Key structural parallels:
- Incentive alignment as system integrity — a rule system where violations are profitable is a system that rewards its own destruction. The principle provides a minimum design constraint: whatever other goals a set of rules serves, it must at minimum ensure that breaking the rules does not pay better than following them. This maps onto game design (if an exploit is more rewarding than intended play, players will exploit), market regulation (if fraud is cheaper than compliance, fraud becomes the norm), and software security (if circumventing access controls is easier than using them, the controls are theater).
- Disgorgement as structural remedy — when someone profits from wrongdoing, the legal remedy is not just punishment but disgorgement: stripping the wrongdoer of the gains. This is structurally different from punishment. Punishment adds a cost; disgorgement removes a benefit. The model predicts that systems that only punish (fines, sanctions) without disgorging (reclaiming gains) will fail when the expected profit exceeds the expected punishment. This explains why corporate fines that are smaller than the profits from violations are ineffective deterrents.
- Retroactive prevention — the principle operates backward in time. A murderer who would inherit from their victim is prevented from inheriting not because the inheritance is punishment for murder (that is handled separately) but because allowing the inheritance would create a profit from the wrong. The model identifies a specific class of rules that operate retroactively to sever the causal link between wrongdoing and benefit, distinct from rules that operate prospectively to deter wrongdoing.
- The self-defeating rule — if a rule can be exploited to produce gains for the exploiter, the rule contains the seeds of its own destruction. Insurance that pays out for self-inflicted damage incentivizes self-inflicted damage. Contracts that reward breach incentivize breach. The model identifies this specific failure mode and provides the corrective principle: redesign the rule so that the prohibited action cannot be profitable.
Limits
- “Wrong” is not always clear — the principle assumes a bright line between right and wrong, but many profitable actions exist in a gray zone. Is aggressive tax planning a “wrong” from which the planner should not profit? Is a hostile corporate takeover a “wrong” from which the raider should not profit? Is whistleblowing that violates an NDA a “wrong” from which the whistleblower should not profit? The model provides no mechanism for resolving these boundary cases, and invoking it in contested territory is often question-begging: calling something a “wrong” and then arguing that no one should profit from it smuggles in the conclusion.
- Enforcement requires detection, which is expensive — the principle assumes that profits from wrongdoing can be identified and disgorged. In practice, the information asymmetry between wrongdoers and enforcers is enormous. Insider trading profits are hard to trace. Fraudulent gains are laundered. Corporate malfeasance is hidden in complex financial structures. The model works in theory but requires enforcement infrastructure that may cost more than the wrongs it prevents.
- Some systems function precisely because wrongdoers profit — plea bargaining, where defendants receive reduced sentences in exchange for information, is a system that deliberately allows wrongdoers to profit (in the form of reduced punishment) from their cooperation. Leniency programs in antitrust law reward the first cartel member to confess. These systems violate the principle in its strict form but produce better outcomes than strict adherence would. The model does not account for the pragmatic value of strategic exceptions.
- Collective action problems — the principle addresses individual wrongdoers but maps poorly onto situations where the “wrong” is a collective action problem. When an entire industry benefits from a practice that is later deemed wrongful (asbestos, tobacco, fossil fuels), the question of who should disgorge what becomes structurally intractable. The model’s individual-actor framing does not scale to systemic wrongs with diffuse beneficiaries.
Expressions
- “No one should profit from their own wrong” — the English form of the maxim, used in legal arguments and general ethical reasoning
- “Crime doesn’t pay” — the folk version, expressing the same principle as an aspiration rather than a description
- “Unjust enrichment” — the legal doctrine that operationalizes the principle: benefits obtained at another’s expense through wrongful means must be returned
- “Moral hazard” — the economic concept describing what happens when the principle is violated: insulation from consequences encourages risk-taking and wrongdoing
- “Perverse incentive” — the general systems concept for rules that reward the behavior they are intended to prevent
- “Slayer rule” — the specific legal doctrine preventing a murderer from inheriting from their victim, the clearest application of the principle
Origin Story
The principle derives from the Roman law maxim nullus commodum capere potest de injuria sua propria and has deep roots in equity jurisprudence. In English law, the principle received its most famous application in Riggs v. Palmer (1889), where the New York Court of Appeals held that a grandson who murdered his grandfather could not inherit under the grandfather’s will, even though the will was valid and the statute of wills contained no exception for murderers.
Judge Earl’s opinion argued that all laws must be interpreted in light of the fundamental maxim that no one should profit from their own wrong, even when the literal text of the statute would permit it. The case became a landmark in legal philosophy, cited by Ronald Dworkin as the paradigmatic example of how legal principles operate alongside and sometimes override legal rules.
The maxim was collected in Broom’s A Selection of Legal Maxims (1845) and remains a foundational principle across common law jurisdictions, applied in inheritance law, insurance law, contract law, and tort law.
References
- Riggs v. Palmer, 115 N.Y. 506 (1889) — the landmark application in inheritance law
- Broom, H. A Selection of Legal Maxims (1845)
- Dworkin, R. Taking Rights Seriously (1977) — uses Riggs v. Palmer as the central example of principles vs. rules
- Birks, P. Unjust Enrichment (2nd ed., 2005) — the doctrinal framework for disgorgement remedies
Related Entries
Structural Neighbors
Entries from different domains that share structural shape. Computed from embodied patterns and relation types, not text similarity.
- First Do No Harm (medicine/metaphor)
- System Resilience vs. Fragility (architecture-and-building/mental-model)
- Do As Much Nothing As Possible (medicine/metaphor)
- Homeostasis (/mental-model)
- Psychological Flexibility (materials/metaphor)
- Constancy of Purpose (manufacturing/mental-model)
- Everyone Goes Home (fire-safety/mental-model)
- Culture as a Control System (physics/paradigm)
Structural Tags
Patterns: balancepathforce
Relations: preventrestore
Structure: equilibrium Level: generic
Contributors: agent:metaphorex-miner