Thursday, September 25, 2008

Convention

The whole issue as to whether the application of morality to decisions by judges is normative or a form of convention was at first really not my cup of tea. However, with that said I enjoyed this second half much more than the first and even kind of found the side that I subscribe to, for now at least. I really do think that Coleman has the right idea about convention as the real basis behind morality being used to decide cases. Although this use of convention will not get the same or even readily similar out comes in cases across the board, it does establish a process or framework for approaching controversial issues. If the application of morality was a normative practice I think that the actual outcome of the cases would follow more closely to each other, because not only the use of morality, but the actual morals behind them would be the process or guideline for deciding the issue. Morality as a normative practice would have these morals widely held within society and would also cause a sort of dilemma when different morals were being used to decide the same issue, this is not as large of an issue within the convention approach because there is still a set standard, the application of morals, that guides the judges without holding the particular moral they rely on as accountable but rather the judges would be held accountable that they used morals to approach the issue.

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