Socrates Now! How Blind Justice?

America has produced some philosophers of note, one of whom is Charles Peirce (1839-1914). He was a remarkable man, best known as a logician and mathematician. He was also an astronomer, chemist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist and lifelong student of medicine, to give but a short list of his accomplishments. In describing the nature of thought, he offers the maxim: “We think in order to believe.”
Peirce's conclusion is reminiscent of King Procrusteus who, when receiving overnight guests too short for his beds, had them put to the rack and stretched. When the proved too tall, he had their legs chopped to fit.

The United States Supreme Court ruling on assisted suicide is a recent example of how prejudice of this sort can influence judgments believed to be predicated upon pure reason alone. The case involved the right of the state of Oregon to make legal assisted suicides by physicians for terminally ill patients. The U.S. Attorney General claimed this was turning doctors into drug traffickers and, indirectly, murderers (the legal angle through which they attacked the law), and Oregon replied that the voters had spoken otherwise- twice.

Ostensibly, the Supreme Court and our legal system is governed by the principles of sound reasoning. Lady Liberty wears a blind-fold, symbolizing her refusal to be unduly influenced by forces outside of reason's constraints, and in her left hand hangs the balance through which she evaluates the merits of the arguments presented. In her other hand she grips the sword through which she makes her judgments known. This system is designed to promote justice, and justice requires that reason prevail in the realm of law. Indeed law and reason are nigh on the synonymous. Ask yourself: If you were accused of a crime, would you want an impassioned mob determining your fate, or the reasoned deliberations of a judge?

Given all of this, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of sustaining the Oregon Law. The final tally was 6-3 in favor of doctor assisted suicide. There are two points worth noting in this decision.

The first is that following the course of reason does not necessarily lead all of us to the same destination. We must presume that each of the nine judges heard exactly the same arguments for and against the Oregon law, and yet they differed in their final judgments. I realize that I may be commenting on the obvious, but I do find it fascinating that reasonable people can disagree over the same set of facts. Logic, after all, follows prescribed procedures, and the method for determining a valid, logical conclusion is almost automatic: plug the subjects and predicates into the existing formulas, and then calculateyour final deduction.

The problem is that being reasonable is a much broader affair than being logical. For example, reason must account for the human condition, the emotional elements of a case, even though emotional factors are not supposed to be the determining elements for a final adjudication. If a person were to speak passionately about the agony a loved one endured during the final months of terminal cancer, a reasonable person listening to this account is necessarily moved. Despite the fact that pure logic would dismiss all of this as irrelevant, reason is not without heart. Indeed the truth is that the most reasonable of arguments is actually a sophisticated process of personal interpretation. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about the same event because their interpretations and evaluations of that event inevitably differ: one experience, two explanations. Exactly how this comes to be is too complex to address in this short article.

The second point I find interesting about the Supreme Court's decision is who decided what. When we look at the dissenting votes we see that all three justices are catholics. On the affirmative side we see only one Catholic, with the others being a mix of Jewish, Episcopalian, and Protestant. When we examine catholic doctrine it becomes obvious that we are not dealing with a moral system that is open to variations upon its theme. This is an absolute system, and the values promulgated therein do not shift with the times. Thou shalt not kill is not open to interpretation, (war notwithstanding). Nor is there a way in which the church doctrine can be bent so as to allow for a person to kill his/herself. According to the Catholic religion suicide is a sin, and therefore a transgression against the will of God. This is what is meant, in part at least, when we speak of absolute moral codes.

So, it is not surprising that the dissenting opinions in the case of physician-assisted suicide came from Catholic Justices, men who implied by their decisions that assisted suicide was a legalized form of killing and therefore wrong. It was upon this implicit premise that the U.S. Attorney General initiated the case in the first place, or at least this was the emotional backdrop that initiated the legal argument. So the question arises: Should the religious beliefs of these justices have any influence on the case at all?

Ideally, reasoned discourse is not supposed to promote belief systems. In fact, the business of reason is most often quite the opposite: Let's discriminate between reasoned actions and moral compulsions. If a man claims he has the right to kill his sister because she has dishonored the family (the so-called “honor killing” that is practiced in many countries to this day), then reason must step in and provide guidance. What is customary, what is deemed moral by a particular culture or religion, is not necessarily the same thing as truth. After all, it was thought for centuries that the earth was flat. This was the belief, a view based upon common sense: Take a look at the ground, and you too will be convinced. But, in this instance reason has shown both belief and common sense to be wrong.