Gianni Sarra

A recurring methodological mistake within the ‘dirty hands’ literature, the view that politicians must sometimes justifiably commit real moral wrongs, has been to assume that only a specific kind of choice structure creates the space for justifiable dirtying. Instead, I argue that the circumstances that justify political dirt are not monolithic and identify three separate ways in which dirtying conduct can become all-things-considered justifiable. Dirty Episodes cover instances of delineable episodic decisions that inflict dirt, and where such dirtying behaviour is justifiable as a lesser evil–I also argue that ‘ticking-bomb’ cases that usually serve this function in philosophy should be decentred. Dirty Careers covers the quotidian moral dirt demanded by politics as a career (without necessarily demanding an entirely separate political normativity). Dirty Rules concerns the contingent structural factors and ‘terms of the competition’ that undesirably demand or legitimise dirtying behaviour from political agents.

Focusing on the contemporary US context, this article examines the ethical quandaries raised by partisan gerrymandering, where constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral benefit. More specifically, it will examine the ethics of retaliatory gerrymandering. Though gerrymandering cannot be defended as a political practice by any agent who assigns intrinsic value to democracy, it might be justified as a ‘dirty hands’ (DH) practice, where it is all-things-considered justified as a lesser evil that still leaves a moral residue. However, it does not work as a standard DH problem, as the stakes of gerrymandering are usually less extreme and the causes more structural, making the usual language of DH a poor fit. The core moral intuition behind DH, of doing wrong to do right, is still appropriate, but is best understood within the context of retaliation. When others set the terms of the competition to make a practice such as gerrymandering essential for political victory, a proportionate use of these practices might be necessary to compete.