The Duck That Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini

Author:Julian Baggini [Baggini, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

See also 21. The power of suggestion

30. Flattery

46. Logically consistent nonsense

86. The power of bold assertion

51. Meet Mr. Loophole

Legality and morality

I did nothing wrong. I broke no laws. I broke no rules of the House.

Congressman Tom DeLay69

In 2005 a Texas grand jury indicted the Republican congressman Tom DeLay for conspiring to violate Texas state election laws concerning the funding of political campaigns. DeLay denied the charges, saying they were politically motivated: the campaign finance investigation was led by Travis County, Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat. DeLay, a former House majority leader, did not seek reelection in 2006 and at the time of writing was still awaiting trial.

Did DeLay do anything wrong? In one sense it is of course too soon to say: we must await the result of his trial. But will that actually settle matters? That depends on which question you are asking. Were DeLay’s statements quoted above three separate claims, or three parts of one claim?

They should be three. The first, “I did nothing wrong,” is a moral claim. Morality and legality are two different matters. Sometimes what is illegal is nonetheless right, such as when Rosa Parks disobeyed Montgomery’s racial segregation laws and sat in a seat reserved for white people. This is the flipside of the fact that what is legal is sometimes nonetheless wrong, such as discriminating according to race in the first place.

So when DeLay said “I broke no laws,” this is a different claim from the one that he did nothing wrong. Similarly, “I broke no rules of the House” is a third claim, since Congress regulates itself and to break its rules may on occasion be neither immoral nor illegal.

I can’t read DeLay’s mind, and perhaps he meant to make three separate claims, and I’m sure he would defend all three propositions individually. But there are other plausible readings of his statement that do not see the three elements as being so distinct. Many people hearing him talk would have assumed that the assertions that he broke no rules or laws are what justified his first claim that he did no wrong. The quote, from a television interview, could have been transcribed as “I did nothing wrong: I broke no laws, I broke no rules of the House.” People often say something like this when they invoke rules and laws in their moral defense. It is not, however, a sound way of reasoning.

The most cynical way of viewing this common maneuver is that people try to hide behind the law. Some are more honest and drop any pretense that a legal defense is a moral one. In the UK, the lawyer Nick Freeman has become something of a celebrity and earned the title “Mr. Loophole” for his success in overturning driving convictions for his often wealthy clients. Freeman does not even pretend to claim that none of his clients did anything wrong. Of one of the drunk-driving convictions he helped overturn, he said, “There was no doubt the driver was over the limit.

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