Dueling To Death Research Paper

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Pages: 4

Consenting adults should not be allowed to duel to the death. Dueling to the death is an old combat tradition that used to be used among mean in order to uphold their honor. Duels were done at a time where the “courts could offer a gentleman no real justice [so] matters had to be resolved with the shedding of blood” (Hutcheson & McKay, 2010). However, that is not the case today. Today we live in a world where the courts, for the most part, can serve a person justice. Further, the idea of honor killings can lead to a slippery slope. If we allow dueling to the death in order to uphold ones honor and prove they are reputable and courageous, then we have to be concerned with other types of honor killings. In some countries women are killed if …show more content…
This is because there is a morally sufficient reason to limit ones liberty if limiting their liberty would prevent or reduce a person from performing behavior that is immoral—even if the behavior would not cause harm or offense according to legal moralism. Dueling to the death means taking manners into one’s own hands and the killing of one’s opponent. Murder is something in our society that we deem to be highly immoral, for the most part, we find it to be immoral even if one is consenting. Therefore, “prohibiting conduct that tends to produce evil [like dueling] can be legitimate simply because of the preventative effect [of preventing a murder]” according to Feinberg (p. 8). We all agree murder is bad and that an “eye for an eye” should not be left up to the people. That is why we have a justice system, who is supposed to seek and serve justice. This means that a law against dueling is a law that exists for the protection of society. A law like this is not made to function only to protect “the individual from injury, annoyance, corruption, and exploitation; the law mist protect also the institutions and the community ideas, political, and moral” (Devlin, p. 22). Although Devlin, would think that a private matter of dueling would be permissible, he had strong beliefs that we should