Title:
The Case of the Speluncean Explorers : Nine New Opinions
Author:
Publisher:
Routledge
Date:
1998
ISBN:
0-8204-1212-0
Web pages:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/cse.htm
Description:
(by Peter Suber)
The book uses a famous fictitious legal case to illustrate nine contemporary philosophies of law. It presupposes no knowledge of law or philosophy of law, and should be a painless, even enjoyable introduction to legal philosophy.
The famous fictitious legal case was created by Lon Fuller in his article, "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers," Harvard Law Review, vol. 62, no. 4 (1949) pp. 616-645. The case tells the story of a group of spelunkers (cave-explorers) in the Commonwealth of Newgarth, trapped in a cave by a landslide. As they approach the point of starvation, they make radio contact with the rescue team. Engineers on the team estimate that the rescue will take another 10 days. The men describe their physical condition to physicians at the rescue camp and ask whether they can survive another 10 days without food. The physicians think this very unlikely. Then the spelunkers ask whether they could survive another 10 days if they killed and ate a member of their party. The physicians reluctantly answer that they would. Finally, the men ask whether they ought to hold a lottery to determine whom to kill and eat. No one at the rescue camp is willing to answer this question. The men turn off their radio, and some time later hold a lottery, kill the loser, and eat him. When they are rescued, they are prosecuted for murder, which in Newgarth carries a mandatory death penalty. Are they guilty? Should they be executed?
Fuller wrote five Supreme Court opinions on the case which explore the facts from the perspectives of profoundly different legal principles. The result is a focused and concrete illustration of the range of Anglo-American legal philosophy at mid-century. My nine new opinions attempt to bring this picture up to date with our own more diverse and turbulent jurisprudence half a century later.
A reprint of the original article by Lon Fuller can be found at: http://www.unet.brandeis.edu/teuber/lawspelunk.html