I see loyalty - roughly perseverance in relational commitments despite the cost of such perseverance - as an important human value/virtue. Think of it as a kind of relational glue.

Structurally I don't see a fundamental difference between what we may reasonably expect of police and doctors - though obviously the fact that doctors are generally pursuing life-saving activities and police may be engaged in life-threatening activities may lead to differences in how we construe the moral limits to their roles.

In separating out, say, legal and moral requirements, I tend to work with paradigms rather than strict divisions - eg, paradigmatically, legal requirements are jurisdictionally bound whereas ethical requirements are aspirationally universal; ethical requirements focus especially on intentions whereas legal requirements focus primarily on conduct; ethical requirements take priority over legal requirements; and so on.

As a matter of ethics - our broader social life needs to be constrained by law and other devices - resolving at the societal level matters that should not be left for individual ethical negotiation. What is important - in the end - is that we are enabled to flourish in ways that acknowledge our dignity.

It is odd that a value/virtue that plays such a central role in dramatic literature has played such a small role in philosophical writing. There are probably a number of reasons, but I think that a predilection for a certain kind of individualism is a major one. Others might include the fashionability of consequentialism, the idea that loyalty has more to do with sentiment than reason, as well as its proneness to corruption. The revival of interest in virtue/character as distinct from rules/principles has also created space for a renewed, if hesitant, interest in loyalty.

I confess to being something of a philosophical butterfly. The world is full of so many interesting questions, and although my greatest passion is for some form of applied ethics, that leaves me with oodles of possibilities, many of which I have never had the time or opportunity to explore in great depth.

My view of ethics and of its priority is connected to my view that we are fundamentally relational beings - both the product of human interactions, as well as committed as part of the expression of our own humanity to various social involvements. I see ethics as having two places in the maintenance of these relational activities - first as providing the basic coinage of our interactions qua humans and second as mediating the various roles we assume as humans.