Word: consequentialist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
THERE ARE TWO POSSIBLE ways to argue for intensive broadcast media coverage of trials, rape or otherwise. One is consequentialist: claiming that courts work better when they know they are being watched. The other is categorical: invoking a public right to know or a right to untrammeled free press. As applied to events such as the Smith rape trial, neither of these arguments makes sense...
First, consider the consequentialist argument, which is rooted in the knowledge that closed-door trials are Stalinist stuff. Abuses of justice breed easily when nobody knows that the judges are doing. Keeping trials open and public does not ensure that convictions and acquittals will not be based on arbitrary whim. Without reporting on courtroom activities, the guardians of justice are themselves unguarded...
...television audience does not guarantee any higher a level of judicial integrity than that ensured by the audience physically present. The consequentialist argument, then, actually works against TV trial coverage...
CONSIDER the perennial fall Core favorite, "Justice." Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel takes a hoard of students on a dizzying flight through categorical and consequentialist reasoning, from politics based on independent standards of right to home-grown community justice. It is a worthwhile trip, but not a unique one. Upper level political philosophy courses also serve as a window into the conflict between the right and the good. Achieving harmony between our roles as citizens and as people is not a question that begins and ends in Moral Reasoning...