Sherif Girgis

Germain Grisez’s philosophical argument for respecting human life has been developed by fellow new natural law theorists and applied to a range of lethal actions, for its conclusion is vast: intending the death of any human being as a means or an end is wrong in itself. For some Thomists, the NNL view on killing is both lax and rigorist: They consider it lax because its narrow criterion for what is “intended” leaves out some acts, especially ones related to abortion, that the critics consider murder. And they consider the NNL view rigorist insofar as it apparently rules out the death penalty, contrary to the Thomistic tradition and perhaps even heretically. However, the most salient philosophical arguments for exceptions to the principle against intending anyone’s death are weaker than the case for any given premise of the contrary NNL argument. Nevertheless, some NNL theorists’ arguments on life are unsound, some can be defended better than they have been, and some nonphilosophical objections based on theological authority require more exploration.

Many ethicists see equality as (a) a basic value, (b) a basic moral norm, or (c) a fact about persons underlying moral rights. Some thinkers have argued against (a) and (b). Here I apply and extend their insights. I apply them to a tradition that has long given equality a fundamental role: the broadly Aristotelian or natural-law tradition stretching from classical Greece through Aquinas to contemporary thinkers like John Finnis (on whose well-worked out account I focus). And I extend these insights by questioning (c): Not only is equality not a basic value or a basic moral norm; but the claim often said to ground moral rights—that all persons are equal in moral worth or status—is empty and potentially misleading given natural-law as well as many non-consequentialist views of personhood. I end by considering how equality talk can still remind us of important moral truths about deliberation.

Accomplice liability makes someone guilty of a crime he never committed, so long as he helped or influenced the perpetrator and did so with the required mens rea. Just what that mens rea should be has been contested for more than a century. Here I consider three major approaches and find them all wanting. I propose rejecting their common (but rarely questioned) assumption that what matters is the helper’s mental state toward the perpetrator’s commission of an offense. I suggest considering instead his stance toward the perpetrator’s intention to act: a helper is an accomplice, on this view, if he (a) intends to see to it that the principal form or keep his own plan to commit an offense and (b) does not intend or expect that plan’s frustration. This standard better justifies imposing accomplice liability. It more precisely picks out those helpers culpable for the perpetrator’s very offense. And this parity of guilt is the best—perhaps the only good—basis for imposing the same liability on accomplice and principal, in a system so retribution-driven as to choose to do so at all.