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Utilitarians view society as a single entity, which devalues the rights and human dignity of
the individual.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queens U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, Rawls on Technology and Deontology JSTOR)
Scott Gordon echoes this interpretation of utilitarianism when he says that utilitarians adopt the view
"that 'society' is an organic entity and contend that its utility is the proper objective of social
policy." This view, he says, "permits flirtation with the grossest form of anti-individualistic
social philosophy."4 This, then, is Rawls's major example of a "teleological" theory which gives priority
to the good over the right. His rejection of the priority of the good, in this context, is just the corollary of his
affirmation of the separateness of persons: promoting the well-being of the social organism cannot
be the goal from which people's rightful claims are derived, since there is no socialorganism. Since individuals are distinct, they are ends in themselves, not merely agents or
representatives of the well-being of the social organism. This is why Rawls believes that
utilitarianism is teleological, and why he believes that we should reject it in favor of a deontological
doctrine.
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Utilitarianism quantifies the value of a human being and thus destroys the value to life
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 26)
If there are no ethical absolutes, human persons, rather than being the norm and source from which other
things receive their value, become simply items or commodities with a relative value-inviolable only up to
the point at which it is expedient to violate them in order to achieve an objective. It would then make no
sense at all to speak of the immeasurable value of the human person. Far from being immeasurable-that is,
beyond calculation-the value of a person would be quite specific and quantifiable, something to be weighed
in the balance against other values.
Utilitarianism belittles the right to life, reducing the value to human life to nothing more
than a number.
Sanford Levy, 2000 (Prof of Philosophy @ Montana State, Morality, Rules, And Consequences: A Critical
Reader, "The Educational Equivalence of Act and Rule Utilitarianism", 2000 p. 28)
At the same time, act utilitarianism is clearly an extremist view from the commonsense perspective
of 'ordinary morality', which consists of the intuitions which most people in our social context share
about right and wrong acts. On the one hand, act utilitarianism is overly permissive because it
doesn't recognize ordinary moral constraints against doing or allowing serious harm
(including death) to others. Because it doesn't recognize these constraints, it denies that
individuals have corresponding fixed rights not to be harmed. To save the lives of five patients
who need different organ transplants, for example. a surgeon will be permitted to seize and
chop up the innocent Chuck to harvest his healthy heart, liver, lungs and so on, if these
organs happen to be matches for the respective patients. 'After all, if everyone counts
equally then it is simply a matter of five versus one. Obviously, it is a horrible result that Chuck
will end up dead; but it would be an even worse result if five people end up dead. So the right
thing to do - according to [act] utilitarianism -is to kill Chuck.'6 There isn't any thought that
Chuck has a 'deontological right' not to be killed for his organs.
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-------------- (continues from previous page)-------------question. For example I decided some time ago to put aside the then present pleasures of idleness to
write this lecture so as to have later this greater pleasure of appearing before you here. In this case the
later, greater pleasure for the sake of which the lesser, earlier pleasure of idleness is sacrificed is really
enjoyed [*678] by me, the same human being who made the earlier sacrifice. By a misleading analogy
with an individual's prudence, maximising Utilitarianism treats not merely one person's pleasure as
replaceable by some greater pleasure of that same person, but it also treats the pleasure or happiness of
one individual as similarly replaceable by the greater pleasure of other individuals. So it treats the division
between persons as of no more moral significance than the division between times which separates one
individual's earlier pleasure from his later pleasure. But the analogy is false because there is no one person
who sacrifices the lesser pleasure but enjoys the greater pleasure later, and the separate identity of different
persons is accordingly a division quite different from the merely temporal division between different
experiences of a single person, and has a moral claim on our attention of a quite different order.
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Physicians used utilitarian morals to justify lethal experiments for the greater good of the
German state. Their skewed view of what was for the greater good led them to eliminate
various minority groups.
Arthur L. Kaplan, 2005 (The Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and Chair of the Dept of Medical
Ethics and Director, Center for Bioethics, UPenn, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
Online, Too Hard to Face, http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/394)
Physicians could justify their actions, whether direct involvement with euthanasia and lethal
experiments, or, merely support for Hitler and the Reich, on the grounds that the Jew, the homosexual,
the congenitally handicapped, and the Slav posed a threat, a biological threat, a genetic threat, to the
existence and future of the Reich. The appropriate response to such a threat was to eliminate it, just as
a physician must eliminate a burst appendix by means of surgery or a dangerous bacterium by using
penicillin.5 Viewing specific ethnic groups and populations as threatening the health of the German
state permitted, and in the view of those on trial demanded, the involvement of medicine in mass
genocide, sterilization, and lethal experimentation. The biomedical paradigm provided the theoretical
basis for allowing those sworn to the Hippocratic principle of nonmaleficence to kill in the name of the
state.
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----------CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE---------------she has done nothing to deserve, or become liable to, such a fate. She would present these personal
facts as considerations whose moral significance is intrinsic and decisive, rather than instrumental and
fortuitous, mediated by a useful convention (which, in different circumstances, might enjoin limiting war by
targeting only civilians). And her argument, couched in personal terms, would seem to be more to the
point than the impersonal calculation of good and bad consequences by means of which the
consequentialist would settle the matter.
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We have a prima facia duty to certain entities due to special relationships with those
entities, preceding consequentialist concerns. These relationships justify action based on
claims of morality and precede Utilitarian values.
David McNaughton and Piers Rawling in 98 (profs. Of philosophy @ Keele University and the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, Ratio, On Defending Deontology, issue 11, p. 42-43)
We begin with duties of special relationship. In a telling paragraph, Ross contrasts his view with
consequentialism thus: [Consequentialism] says, in effect, that the only morally significant relation in
which my neighbours stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action. They do stand in
this relation to me, and this relation is morally significant. But they may also stand to me in the
relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend
to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like; and each of these relations is the
foundation of a prima facie duty (1965, p.19). The various relationships in which we stand to other
people generate a variety of agent-relative reasons: one can be required, say, to keep a promise,
even if by breaking it promise-keeping as whole would thereby be increased. On the direct-act
consequentialist view, on the other hand, if promises should be kept, that can only be because
promise-keeping is valuable, and hence should, ceteris paribus, be maximized. Accepting Rosss
view of duties of special relationship entails that what is right is not solely determined by
considerations of agent-neutral value. At this point, the consequentialist may rightly claim that no
account has been given of why certain relationships are morally basic in a way that does not permit
their violation whenever such violation would increase value. But it is hard to see how this is a
complaint, unless it is also a complaint that the consequentialist has not explained why moralitys sole
concern is the increase of value on the consequentialist view, it is apparently taken to be selfevident that all moral reasons ultimately rest on considerations of agent-neutral value. Justification
has to stop somewhere, and it is not clear that the intuitionists stopping place is less defensible than
that of the consequentialist. The thought that others have direct moral claims on us that are not
explicable in terms of agent-neutral value is a familiar one in everyday moral thinking. Intuitionism
accepts this thought at face value and thereby rejects the consequentialist perspective. In addition
to agent-relative reasons generated by duties of special relationship, of course, Ross also takes as basic
those generated by constraints. He is silent, however, on the subject of whether his line on the
former can be extended to cover the latter. There is an obvious disanalogy between constraints
and duties of special relationship: constraints do not depend on the specific nature of the relationships
we have. I should not treat anyone in the way that constraints forbid, whether I have a relationship
with them or not. Note, however, that the usual objection that is raised to justifying constraints how
could it ever be that we are required not to maximize the good? has already been met. For Rosss
account of duties of special relationship has already shown that we can make sense of this once we get
away from the consequentialist picture of value determining what is right. Fulfilling the duties which
stem from special relationships may require us not to maximize the good. Others can have direct moral
claims on us, claims that are not routed via thoughts about the maximization of the good. So we can
already make formal sense of the thought that other agents have a claim on us not to be treated in
certain ways; a claim we standardly express by saying that they have a right not to be harmed,
tortured or killed.
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I shall give an even briefer summary of my argument for the second main thesis, that every agent
logically must accept that all other actual or prospective agents also have rights to freedom and
well-being. This generalization is an application of the logical principle of universalizability. Since
every agent must hold that he has the generic rights because he is a prospective purposive agent, he
also logically must hold that all prospective purposive agents have the generic rights. And from this
generalization the PGC directly follows. Many questions may be and have been raised about this
argument. I have dealt with them elsewhere.23 In the present context I shall confine myself to two
observations. Firstly, if the above argument is sound, it shows that, contrary to the justificatory objection,
belief in moral, and especially human, rights is not only warranted but logically mandatory for all
actual or prospective agents because of the argument's justification or proof of the principle that
grounds the rights. Secondly, the argument establishes a decision procedure for ascertaining what moral
rights persons have, since all justified moral rights consist in one or another segment, individual or
institutional, of the rights to freedom and well-being. For example, the right to have promises to oneself kept is
an instance of a 'nonsubtractive right' to well-being, because broken promises tend -to diminish the promisees'
capabilities of successful action in the particular circumstances affected by the promise. Similarly, the right to
an education is an example of an 'additive right' to well-being, because it serves to increase one's capabilities
for successful purpose-fulfilling actions. Political and economic rights, including rights to civil liberties and to
relief of large-scale starvation, are justified on the basis of 'indirect', i.e. institutional, applications of the PGC.
Thus, as I have tried to show elsewhere, the general moral theory which has the above argument as its
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centrepiece provides determinate contents for the concepts of freedom and well-being and for the human
rights to these goods of agency. A further argument also yields criteria for resolving conflicts of rights, where
one right is overridden by another.24 Hence, a theory upholding moral human rights can avoid the appeals to
intuition which the justificatory objection held to be inevitable.
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Any legitimate government has to follow the general will by acting in the public goodgovernment policy must be utilitarian
Hill in 1998 (R.A., Ph.D, Department of Anthropology, Virginia State University, Government,
Justice and Human Rights, < http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Poli/PoliHill.htm>)
Rousseau writes that a "legitimate" government should obey the general will. The formation of laws,
administration of laws, and dispensation of justice in the courts should all conform to this general will. The
wills of subsections of the populace are only particular; one does not reach the general will until one takes into
account the will of the largest possible group (the more inclusive the group the more just the will): in the case of
citizens of a country the general will is made up of the combined will of all the citizenry. (1) Rousseau answers the
question, "How does one know that one is following the general will?" by writing that the most general will is
always aligned with the public interest, which is characterized by fairness. If the rulers want to follow the
general will, they have only to act justly in order to accomplish it (1987, p. 371). Again justice is introduced.
Rousseau maintains that a legitimate government follows the general will, whose earmark is justice. The
social compact, which establishes this just government, ensures that all citizens are equitably and impartially
treated - no actions guided by the general will are individual or unfair. At such time that the general will, the
collective will of the citizenry, should be overruled by the "executor of the laws," the government ceases to
exist (1955, p. 64). Rousseau, then, feels that legitimate government is tied very closely to justice: the legitimate
government is guided by the general will, which is just; when the government is no longer guided by the just general
will, it is no longer legitimate. Justice is introduced into government as a quality of the general will and of the
actions resulting therefrom. "What is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult, in government, is rigid integrity in
doing strict justice to all..." (1987, p. 375).
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to Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleological Enforcement of Human Rights, Sapientia,
September, < http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf>)
Secondly, it is objected that utilitarianism might give rise to policies that are morally outrageous (examples
which Goodin uses are feeding Christians to lions, distributing the body parts of one person among many others and
hanging an innocent person to appease a mob), but of course if utilitarianism is an exclusively public philosophy,
it spares us the burdens associated with maximising at the margins in each and every case (Goodin, 1995:
22). This is the case because public policies by their very nature have to be durable, and a policy which
allowed any of the above things to occur would necessarily be an unstable one, because of the fear it would
engender. The worry over who is to be next to be fed to the lions, forced to donate their organs, or wrongly
executed would quickly undermine the utility of such a policy and lead to its replacement. Consequently
[u]tilitarianism, employed as a public philosophy, must by its nature adopt institutions and practices and
policies suited to recurring situations and standard individuals (Goodin, 1995: 23).
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Utilitarianism is concerned with maximizing the overall welfare of people and equitable distribution of
wealth
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
Utilitarianism in practice has fairly significant egalitarian implications, because a very uneven
distribution of resources is unlikely to be utility-maximizing. For more information on this, see the question
"Does Utilitarianism favor the redistribution of wealth?" in this FAQ. Utilitarianism is concerned with
maximizing the overall welfare of people, and a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth appears to be
a good way of doing this in practice. It is certainly true, however, that Utilitarianism will promote inequality
when doing so is utility maximizing. To promote equality at the expense of utility is to say that equality is
in itself inherently good, and that in some circumstances it is permissible to increase equality even when
that is not what the people themselves value. The Utilitarian response to this criticism is that, while people
often feel a concern for equality in itself, this is because that has become a part of the prescriptive
morality of modern cultures. Equality is usually beneficial in practice, and so beliefs that equality is a good
thing have thrived. The prevalence of modern belief in equality should be understood not as evidence that
equality is good in itself, but as evidence that belief in equality has produced good results in practice.
Utilitarianism establishes why equality is a good thing (it often promotes welfare), and then promotes it
exactly as far as its benefits justify.
It should be noted that the people who criticize Utilitarianism for not promoting equality usually
place much more importance on equality than the average person. Many of the modern Egalitarian
philosophers who criticize Utilitarianism for being insufficiently egalitarian believe that welfare should be
sacrificed to equality in fairly dramatic ways. A school of thought started by John Rawls, for example,
believes that inequality is only permissible when it increases the welfare of the least well off member of
society. Such a philosophy argues that it is better to have a society where everyone is poor, than to have
a society where a few are very poor but most are very well off. Most people do not agree with such ideas.
Philosophies which would tend to produce policies more egalitarian than Utilitarian policies tend to call for
strategies that would produce very high equality at a significant cost in wealth. One of the hallmarks of
Utilitarianism is that it sanctions any effective method for welfare maximization. This means that
Utilitarianism is compatible with using a highly productive market economy to generate wealth, and then
redistributing it in an efficient and effective manner. Highly egalitarian philosophies other than
Utilitarianism often specify rather extreme methods of how equality is to be achieved, such as the
compensatory resource distribution of Rawls or the formation of cooperatives under Marxism. These are
often not very compatible with market mechanisms, and thus would have substantial problems of
inefficiency.
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Only consequentialism can justify the actions necessary to reach some moral end.
Walter Sinnot-Armstrong in 92 (prof. of philosophy @ Yale University, Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics, An
Argument for Consequentialism, p. 415-416)
All of this leads to necessary enabler consequentialism or NEC. NEC claims that all moral reasons for acts are
provided by facts that the acts are necessary enablers for preventing harm or promoting good. All moral reasons on
this theory are consequential reasons, but there are two kinds. Some moral reasons are prevention reasons, because
they are facts that an act is a necessary enabler for preventing harm or loss. For example, if giving Alice food is
necessary and enables me to prevent her from starving, then that fact is a moral reason to give her food. In this case,
I would not cause her death even 416 / Walter Sinnott-Armstrong if I let her starve, but other moral prevention
reasons are reasons to avoid causing harm. For example, if turning my car to the left is necessary and enables me to
avoid killing Bobby, that is a moral reason to turn my car to the left. The other kind of moral reason is a promotion
reason. This kind of reason occurs when doing something is necessary and enables me to promote (or maximize)
some good. For example, I have a moral reason to throw a surprise party for Susan if this is necessary and enables
me to make her happy. Because of substitutability, these moral reasons for actions also yield moral reasons against
contrary actions. There are then also moral reasons not to do what will cause harm or ensure a failure to prevent
harm or to promote good. What makes these facts moral reasons is that they can make an otherwise immoral act
moral. If I have a moral reason to feed my child, then it might be immoral to give my only food to Alice, who is a
stranger. But this would not be immoral if giving Alice food is necessary and enables me to prevent 'Alice from
starving, as long as my child will not starve also. Similarly, it is normally immoral to lie to Susan, but a lie can be
moral if it is necessary and enables me to keep my party for Susan a surprise, and if this is also necessary and
enables me to make her happy. Thus, NEC fits nicely into the above theory of moral reasons. NEC can provide a
natural explanation of moral substitutability for both kinds of moral reasons. I have a prevention moral reason to
give someone food when doing so is necessary and enables me to prevent that person from starving. Suppose that
buying food is a necessary enabler for giving the person food, and getting in my car is a necessary enabler for
buying food. Moral substitutability warrants the conclusion that I have a moral reason to get in my car. And this act
of getting in my car does have the property of being a necessary enabler for preventing starvation. Thus, the
necessary enabler has the same property that provided the moral reason to give the food in the first place. This
explains why substitutability holds for moral prevention reasons. The other kind of moral reason covers necessary
enablers for promoting good. In my example above, if a surprise party is a necessary enabler for making Susan
happy, and letting people know about the party is a necessary enabler for having the party, then letting people know
is a necessary enabler for making Susan happy. The very fact that provides a moral reason to have the party also
provides a moral reason to let people know about it. Thus, NEC can explain why moral substitutability holds for
every kind of moral reason that it includes. Similar explanations work for moral reasons not to do certain acts, and
this explanatory power is a reason to favor NEC.17
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only a slight possibility. No one can say how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by
some sequence or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it is
not impossible it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all calculations of
probability as it nullifies all calculations of costs and benefits.
Abstractly put, the connections between any use of nuclear weapons and human and natural extinction are
several. Most obviously, a sizable exchange of strategic nuclear weapons can, by a chain of events in nature, lead
to the earth's uninhabitability, to "nuclear winter," or to Schell "republic of insects and grass." But the consideration of extinction
cannot rest with the possibility of a sizable exchange of strategic weapons. It cannot rest with the imperative that a sizable exchange must not take
place.
A so-called tactical or "theater" use, or a so-called limited use, is also prohibited absolutely, because of the
possibility of immediate escalation into a sizable exchange or because, even if there were not an immediate
escalation, the possibility of extinction would reside in the precedent for future use set by any use whatever in a world
in which more than one power possesses nuclear weapons. Add other consequences: the contagious effect on nonnuclear powers who may feel
compelled by a mixture of fear and vanity to try to acquire their own weapons, thus increasing the possibility of use by increasing the number of
nuclear powers; and the unleashed emotions of indignation, retribution, and revenge which, if not acted on immediately in the form of escalation,
can be counted on to seek expression later.
Other than full strategic uses are not confined, no matter how small the explosive power: each would be a
cancerous transformation of the world. All nuclear roads lead to the possibility of extinction. It is true by
definition, but let us make it explicit: the doctrine of no-use excludes any first or retaliatory or later use, whether
sizable or not. No-use is the imperative derived from the possibility of extinction.
By containing the possibility of extinction, any use is tantamount to a declaration of war against humanity. It is
not merely a war crime or a single crime against humanity. Such a war is waged by the user of nuclear
weapons against every human individual as individual (present and future), not as citizen of this or that country. It is not only a war
against the country that is the target. To respond with nuclear' weapons, where possible, only increases the chances of extinction and can never,
therefore, be allowed. The use of nuclear weapons establishes the right of any person or group, acting officially or not, violently or not, to try to
punish those responsible for the use. The aim of the punishment is to deter later uses and thus to try to reduce the possibility of extinction, if, by
chance, the particular use in question did not directly lead to extinction. The form of the punishment cannot be specified. Of course the chaos
ensuing from a sizable exchange could make punishment irrelevant. The important point, however, is to see that those who use nuclear
weapons are qualitatively worse than criminals, and at the least forfeit their offices.
John Locke, a principal individualist political theorist, says that in a state of nature every individual retains the right to punish transgressors or
assist in the effort to punish them, whether or not one is a direct victim. Transgressors convert an otherwise tolerable condition into a state of
nature which is a state of war in which all are threatened. Analogously, the use of nuclear weapons, by containing in an
immediate or delayed manner the possibility of extinction, is in Locke's phrase "a trespass against the whole
species" and places the users in a state of war with all people. And people, the accumulation of individuals,
must be understood as of course always indefeasibly retaining the right of selfpreservation, and hence as
morally allowed, perhaps enjoined, to take the appropriate preserving steps.
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Nor, finally, do we have any particularly good reason to place any great faith in subjective probability estimates. Of
course, we can always bully people into stating their "best guess" as to the chances of anything occurring; we can
even bully them into rendering those probability estimates consistent. But when such estimates are as groundless as
those concerning the chances of nuclear deterrence collapsing into nuclear war are, we should not set any great store
by them. Ellsberg says, "It's no use bullying me into taking action . . . by flattering my 'best judgment.' I know how
little that's based Alas, most people do not. Psychological evidence suggests not only that "individuals are poor
probability assessors" but also, "and perhaps more important, that they underestimate their poorness by assessing
probabilities too tightly."1 Knowing this-and knowing all the severe distortions to which judgments under
uncertainty are prone1'-it would be sheer folly for us to predicate any profoundly important policy choices on such
fallible subjective probability estimates.
The upshot is that it is altogether inappropriate to engage in probabilistic reasoning about the chances of a
breakdown in the balance of terror that leads to a large-scale nuclear war. Objective statistics are unavailable;
theories are too numerous and too divergent; subjective estimates are known to be too unreliable." The problem is
not just that we cannot estimate point probabilities with any great precision-that we cannot say whether the
probability of nuclear war this century is 10 percent or 15 percent. Nor is it even just that we cannot make the sorts
of order-of-magnitude judgments that would allow us to make ordinal judgments about relative probabilities. We are
in a worse situation still. We cannot even say with confidence in what direction any particular strategic innovation
pushes the probability of all-out nuclear war. Some theories maintain that that risk is increased by cruise missiles or
spacebased defenses or nuclear proliferation. Others hold the opposite.13 Neither logic nor experience enables us to
choose confidently between these theories, and only a fool would trust unaided hunches with so much at stake.
The most that can be claimed for deterrence is that it will probably work to prevent war. So if probabilistic reasoning
is inappropriate in these circumstances, deterrence is too. In short, my complaint against nuclear deterrence is that it
amounts to playing the odds without knowing the odds. That constitutes recklessness par excellence. It would be the
height of irresponsibility for anyone to wager the family home on rolls of such radically unpredictable dice. Where
millions of lives are at stake, that judgment must surely apply even more harshly.
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Consequentialism = Inevitable
Deontology inevitably runs into a necessity for consequentialist principles regarding the right to life that are
unanswerable by assertions of moral duty.
Eric Blumenson in 06 (prof. of law @ Suffolk University Law School, 44 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
801, The Challenge of a Global Standard of Justice: Peace, Pluralism, and Punishment at the International Criminal
Court, ln)
For deontologists, the issue becomes especially complicated when treating retributive justice as an absolute
requirement would destroy other moral rights they regard as equally absolute. If ICC charges against LRA leaders
would prolong the war as the Acholi leaders claim, the result would be not simply deaths, but killings perpetrated in
violation of a non-negotiable right to life. Should the ICC not indict, thereby perpetrating an injustice in order to
avoid a greater injustice? War crimes prosecutions are prone to such dilemmas. Sometimes prosecuting some
individuals would result in many more escaping punishment. 129 Sometimes obtaining [*843] indictments may
induce a criminal regime to cling to power, leaving that country's population consigned to suffer continued
violations of their most fundamental human rights. Dworkin famously described such rights as "trumps," because
they demarcate areas in which the individual is inviolable, and thus trump even a majority's competing preferences
or interests. 130 These rights and moral duties are not supposed to be subject to trade-offs - but in the above cases,
observing one non-negotiable right or duty will sacrifice another. Each cannot trump the other, so how should one
assess this collision of absolutist moral demands? Embracing a moral imperative to bring criminals to justice does
not answer this question, unless accompanied by reasons why this moral command should have priority over the
others.
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