The Shipwreck Sailor Case Study

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The Case Of The Shipwreck Sailors
Case:1
In the first case the judge would like to show the 3 men sympathy but he believes he isn’t above the law, he sentences the death penalty. The philosophical label of this judge is legal positivism. One thing that the judge says to back this up is “As much as I would personally wish that these men could return to their families and put this tragic event behind them, I cannot permit them to do so. I am not free to make the law”. This quote showed that this judge was a legal positivist because he says that he wants to show them sympathy and let them return to their families, but he is not free to make the law and he is not above the law. Another quote to back this up is “I have sworn an oath to apply the law that authorized legislators have enacted”. Similar to the last quote, the judge is showing that whether he wants to be sympathetic or not he cannot because he has sworn an oath to the law that he cannot break. One weakness of this theoretical approach is that it is very ruthless. These men did not have a choice, killing Ozzie was the only way for the men to …show more content…

This sounds very bad but based on the circumstance they were in it doesn’t make sense to give these men the death penalty. The law is not a valid factor in this case because a circumstance like this was not even thought of when the rules were being made. Therefore the law should not even be considered.

I do not feel like these three men should be put to death because of what they have done and i cannot bring myself to doing so. They did what they needed to do to survive. The waited as long as they could and ended up doing what was necessary for the three of them to survive. Laws are made to make sure that there is peace in a society where there are a lot of people, but there were only 4 people on that boat. Therefore, I find these three men not guilty of any charges.

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