ONE of my favourite radio programmes is The Moral Maze on BBC 4.
This is a programme where a panel of experts – I use the word loosely because the panel usually includes a newspaper columnist – address some of the complex ethical issues facing contemporary society.
Here is one possible question for such a panel: “Would people in the suburbs of the ruined city of PortauPrince in Haiti be committing a crime if they stole food from a wrecked supermarket?” After all, the seventh Commandment says: “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.
So does that mean there never can be circumstances in which it is morally okay to steal? The law is inflexible, so it is always going to be illegal to steal. But morality is something else. And, of course, you can have bad laws, even silly laws. Is the citizen always required to obey the law, whatever the circumstances? That could be another question for the BBC panel.
To help us with problems relating to the seventh Commandment, we could look at the way the fifth Commandment is treated by society.
And this, I hasten to add, is not a matter of religion, though of course it can be, and is, for many. There is a universal prohibition against killing. All societies, irrespective of their make-up, have laws against it.
The word “homicide” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the killing of one person by another”. And this is universally forbidden.
And an absolutist reading of the fifth Commandment would seem to rule out killing in all circumstances. After all, it says thou shalt not kill, full stop. It doesn’t say thou shalt not kill, except in the following circumstances – A, B and C.
So what might A, B and C be? A might be a just war, B might be self-defence, and C might be capital punishment. This is moral exceptionalism and I don’t know of any society in which it doesn’t operate. And it is even written into charters of rights.
The European Convention on Human Rights, which is now incorporated into our domestic law, is a good example. Article 2 on “the right to life”, reads as follows: “Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law”.
So far so good, but then it goes on: “No one shall be deprived of his life save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law”.
That’s one exception, though, of course, capital punishment is no longer provided for by law in this jurisdiction. Then the article goes on to list three further exceptions – (1) in defence of any person from unlawful violence; (2) in order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained; and (3) in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection.
Recently in this country a retiring judge said we should revisit the question of capital punishment. And, given the way things have gone in the last 20 years, with murder now far more common than it used to be, I suspect a lot of people here would say “Yes” if confronted by the following question: “Do you favour the restoration of capital punishment in Ireland for certain crimes?”
In the USA, one of the staunchest supporters of capital punishment is Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, and a member of the US Supreme Court. One of the staunchest opponents is the actress Susan Sarandon. “The state has no right to kill people,” she says. “That’s just legalised murder.” Is she right?