Dudley And Stephens Case Analysis

The Queen Versus Dudley and Stephens is one of the fundamental cases of ethics and the validity of necessity. With this case the court decided that murder is not justified under the contexts of survival, a difficult and controversial verdict to make considering all the facts. However from my perspective the court did in fact make the right choice, taking into account the definition of justified murder, and the case or morality.

To begin Case of Dudley and Stephens can be chartered back to when Captain Dudley decided to sail to australia, taking his three man crew consisting of Edwin Stephens; Edmund Brooks; and Richard Parker, the cabin boy. The crew takes a turn for the worst when they are shipwrecked, forced to board a lifeboat, and are

Justifiable homicide is murder without malice, such as self defense, the most notable case. Self defense is described as protecting one's life, limbs, and valuable property.This is where the controversy ensues, Dudley killed Parker in an utilitarianism manner, in order to preserve the lives of the greater good, and ensure survival. This does not fit the criteria for self defense, and in accordance to the law Dudley and Stephens act, is in fact unjustifiable murder, due to the fact that Parker posed no threat to the survival of crew. Lord Hale, one of key overseers of the trial refutes this point saying that larceny is not justifiable by hunger ( a starving person stealing bread to eat) a crime more severe such as murder cannot be justified by a false justification neither. Hale laters finalizes this point by saying “he ought rather to die himself, than kill an innocent”. This leads me to my next point

Certain people have a moral duty to sacrifice but the only moral form of sacrifice is to make a sacrifice oneself. Such as Christ sacrificing himself for our sins, men in uniform and overseas sacrifice their lives for our rights and freedoms, and a captain will sacrifice his life for the good of his crew...or at least that's the moral thing to do. As the famous idiom goes “A captain goes down with his ship” this moral etiquette is something that Dudley ignored and engaged in the practice of human sacrifice of another person, this falls on the opposite side of the spectrum, where self sacrifice is considered noble, sacrifice of others is considered immoral, and can be grouped in the same category as barbaric men and women who gave human sacrifices to please gods. To make a moral gesture the Captain should have gave his own life to save his crew, as he has a moral obligation to protect, serve, and guide them, instead of taking the executive decision to kill