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AbbyCosterFirstPaper 5 - 18 Jun 2012 - Main.AlexKonik
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
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| | | Duty to Rescue
The no-duty rule, excusing bystanders who fail to help someone in need, proves repugnant in some situations. | |
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< | for example, in Pope v. State, a woman took a mother and child into her house, and witnessed the mother beat her newborn to death without interfering. She was acquitted of all criminal charges because she did not fall neatly into one of four legal categories of people responsible for another party. In this case, applying the rule led to a highly logical, and undoubtedly immoral, result. | >
> | For example, in Pope v. State, a woman took a mother and child into her house, and witnessed the mother beat her newborn to death without interfering. She was acquitted of all criminal charges because she did not fall neatly into one of four legal categories of people responsible for another party. In this case, applying the rule led to a highly logical, and undoubtedly immoral, result. | | | Convincing rationales, however, weigh in favor of not imposing a duty to act. Firstly, in certain circumstances, acting would harm those that the duty was imposed upon. For example, the law correctly refrains from imposing liability on someone for not jumping in front of a bullet for another. Furthermore, broad imposition of liability would require courts to interfere with inherently personal choices; using the aforementioned Pope case as an example, enforcing a duty would compel bystanders to intervene in parent-child relationships. Finally, in some settings, imposing a broad duty can lead to discrimination. In situations in which there are many bystanders, such as crimes in crowded shopping malls, a duty to rescue would give a prosecutor too much discretion, as there would be no legitimate way to decide which parties to prosecute. | | | (Eben-as you mentioned in class, I would like to keep editing my work over time.) | |
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> | Abby, | | | | |
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> | I like your thesis in this paper a lot. To me, it reads: the law should be more of an attempt to reflect reality and accomplish just results than an attempt to shape reality with futile, absurd results. Your proposed path (standards over rules) reminds me of Carol Rose's Crystals and Mud article. I think you make your point very well by starting and ending with strong biological points, filled in with concrete non-biological examples. | | | | |
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> | My recommendation for your paper is to address your thesis more directly, assuming I have accurately recognized your thesis. I think that adding or reshaping a sentence in three places can help make your thesis very directly stated:
- "it must account for this shortcoming by bending its formal rules to adapt to specific circumstances." - I think it would help to really spell out what you mean by "account for this shortcoming." Do you mean recognize the law's relative weakness and reflect rather than try to guide the reality of human behavior?
- "Through individualized decision-making, the law can incorporate forces greater than itself." - same comment as above - I think really spelling out what "incorporate forces greater than itself" means would go a long way.
- in your intro - "Flexible legal standards, rather than steadfast rules, will atone for its weakness as a form of social control, thereby resulting in more justice." It's hard to get too detailed in an intro because people don't have much context yet, but I think having this sentence state your thesis more directly will launch people into the paper with a very clear idea of what you are getting at through your examples.
Good paper! I am not sure whether I agree with your thesis (I think this question is tough, though I have been retreating quite a bit from the rigid formalism I embraced only recently), but I think you make your point well.
-- AlexKonik - 18 Jun 2012 | | | |
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