Stories of Rights: Developing Moral Theory and Teaching Law

Abstract

Judith Jarvis Thomson is a teacher of philosophy and we are law school teachers. As teachers in different but related disciplines, we share a common pedagogical approach: use of the case method. In law, our cases are stories of real-life struggles with real-life resolutions. But in the law school classroom, the creative teacher will often push beyond the real life story. In Socratic fashion, the law school teacher will pose a series of hypotheticals to test the students' understanding of the case. Often the law school teacher prepares for class by searching for the perfectly framed hypothetical. Judith Jarvis Thomson is the quintessential expert at creating the perfectly framed hypothetical. Her most well-known hypothetical is Famous Violinist. It is intended to pose the problem of abortion in a different light. She asks you to imagine this: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you. Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? [pp. 2-3] A Defense of Abortion, the first essay in Rights, Restitution, & Risk,