Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Moral Officials, Retail Justice, and Three Caveats
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Seven Questions about What Is Fit for an Official to Do
- 1 Law and Office
- 2 The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
- 3 Officials' Obligations Arise from More Than the Law Alone
- 4 The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials
- 5 Patterns of Relationship between Legal and Moral Obligations
- 6 Breaching Obligations
- 7 Tools for the Trade: Maxims and Fallacies
- Epilogue: What the Official Ought to Do: Law and Justice
- Appendix: Taxonomy of Headings: The Lawes and Libertyes of Massachusetts (Discussed in Chapter 1)
- Index
- References
6 - Breaching Obligations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Moral Officials, Retail Justice, and Three Caveats
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Seven Questions about What Is Fit for an Official to Do
- 1 Law and Office
- 2 The Stakes: The Interests of Others in Official Actions
- 3 Officials' Obligations Arise from More Than the Law Alone
- 4 The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials
- 5 Patterns of Relationship between Legal and Moral Obligations
- 6 Breaching Obligations
- 7 Tools for the Trade: Maxims and Fallacies
- Epilogue: What the Official Ought to Do: Law and Justice
- Appendix: Taxonomy of Headings: The Lawes and Libertyes of Massachusetts (Discussed in Chapter 1)
- Index
- References
Summary
“But stay,” someone will object, “when the prize is very great, there is excuse for doing wrong.”…
Work out your own ideas and sift your thoughts so as to see what conception and idea of a good man they contain. Pray, tell me, does it coincide with the character of your good man to lie for his own profit, to slander, to overreach, to deceive?…What is there that your so-called expediency can bring to you that will compensate for what it can take away, if it steals from you the name of a “good man” and causes you to lose your sense of honour and justice? For what difference does it make whether a man is actually transformed into a beast or whether, keeping the outward appearance of a man, he has the savage nature of a beast within?
Cicero, On Duties, Book III, Chapter XXLegal officials will breach their duties. The duties are too many, too conflicting, and too hard. What matters is how the individual official decides what to do and what not to do in an imperfect world in which some measure of failure is certain.
Dirty hands, the longstanding label for the impossibility of an official's satisfying all obligations of office, cannot, however, excuse the official from the duties themselves, nor can it justify failures of morality or illegality.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- I Do Solemnly SwearThe Moral Obligations of Legal Officials, pp. 203 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
, De Officiis 351, 355 (, trans.) (Loeb edn.) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913)Google Scholar
, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Political Writings 309 ( & , eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar
, “Torture, Terrorism, and Interrogation,” in Torture, A Collection 289, 291 (, ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar
, “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb,” in The Torture Debate in America 35, 44 (, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar
of Brockwell, remarks at Law, Intelligence, and Democracy, University of Arkansas School of Law, Fayetteville, Arkansas, April 2007Google Scholar
, remarks at Law, Intelligence, and Democracy, University of Arkansas School of Law, Fayetteville, Arkansas, April 2007Google Scholar
, De Officiis, Book III, Chapters VII–XIII 303–35 (, trans.) (Loeb edn.) (Harvard University Press, 1913)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , “The Jurisprudence of Action and Inaction in the Law of Tort: Solving the Puzzle of Nonfeasance and Misfeasance from the Fifteenth through the Twentieth Centuries,” 33 Duquesne Law Review 807 (1995)Google Scholar
, “Duties to Rescue and the Anticooperative Effects of Law,” 88 Georgetown Law Journal 105 (1999)Google Scholar
, “Some Brief Thoughts (Mostly Negative) about ‘Bad Samaritan’ Laws,” 40 Santa Clara Law Review 971 (2000)Google Scholar
, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Harcourt, 2004)Google Scholar
, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature 50n (1691) ( and , eds.) (Liberty Fund, 2003)Google Scholar
, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied to Judicial Reasoning (, ed.) (Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar
, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777–1827 (Louisiana State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner's Rebellion (Louisiana State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004)Google Scholar
, The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone 11 (University of Georgia Press, 2000)Google Scholar
, Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror27–30 and 206–8 (Penguin, 2008)Google Scholar
, Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments54–6 (Wadsworth, 1995)Google Scholar
, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (, trans.) (Black Rose, 1998)Google Scholar
, “Passion and Nation: War, Crime, and Guilt in the Individual and the Collective,” 78Notre Dame Law Review 751 (2003)Google Scholar
, “Legislating Morality in the Proposed CIA Charter,” in Public Duties: The Moral Obligations of Government Officials (, , & , eds.) (Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar
and , “Guilt: Elaboration of a Multidimensional Model,” 53Psychological Record 51 (2003)Google Scholar
, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (University of Arkansas Press, 1997)Google Scholar
, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions (#101 Being Offended) (Random House, 2008)Google Scholar
, “Sex in the Sunlight: The Effectiveness, Efficiency, Constitutionality, and Advisability of Publishing Names and Pictures of Prostitutes' Patrons,” 49Vanderbilt Law Review 1525 (1997)Google Scholar
, “The Meanings of Shame: Implications for Legal Reform,” 3Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (1997)Google Scholar
, Shame and Necessity (University of California Press, 1993)
, “The Language of Law in Classical Athens,” in The Moral World of the Law (, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar
, see , At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New York City, 1898–1958 (Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar
& , “White House Backed U.S. Attorney Firings, Officials Say,” Washington Post A1 (March 3, 2007)Google Scholar
, Letter to M. le Chevalier de…, August 15, 1811, in 1 Lettres et Opuscules Inédits du Comte J. de Maistre264 (5th ed.) (Vaton, 1869)