Book Report on The Case of the Speluncean Explorers
The Case of the Speluncean Explorers is a classic work of jurisprudence composed of a fictional legal case proposed by the renowned jurist Fuller and the five jurisprudential viewpoints he wrote, as well as nine additional jurisprudential viewpoints subsequently proposed by Suber. Through reading this book, I have gained a preliminary understanding of the major legal schools of thought in the modern West.
First, the commonality among the different judges lies in the fact that they all took the public into account and possessed, to a greater or lesser extent, empathy or compassion for the survivors in the cave. Therefore, the first Chief Justice, Truepenny, to whom Fuller devoted the least ink and who represents legal textualism, although emphasizing the interpretation of the law’s own text and consequently sentencing them to be guilty, still thought of relying on executive power outside the law to grant them clemency from the penalty. Even though “the statute is well known: ‘whoever shall willfully take the life of another shall be punished by death’” (p. 18), compassion and morality provided an exception; the law considered morality. This legal school achieves a balance between respect for the law itself and social reality that is more moral in nature than abstractly reasoning in nature. Perhaps the reason Fuller “appointed” him as the sole Chief Justice is also because Fuller, to a certain extent, esteemed this viewpoint, just as the basic thought of his own doctrine: law and morality are inseparable, and there exists a middle path between traditional natural law and legal positivism. Truepenny seems to be a legal positivist who considers only the law, yet simultaneously considers the role of morality. Although requiring executive intervention seems to violate the Western principle of separation of powers, “it is effectively instructing the Chief Executive on what he should do in this case” (p. 33). Meanwhile, the other four judges penned by Fuller also explored the relationship between law and morality. Except for the third judge who did not render a verdict, the other judges also distinctly represented the main viewpoints of certain legal schools.
The second judge represents the main viewpoints of the Natural Law school. He first argues why natural law should be applied, and then argues the result of applying the spirit of natural law in this case. However, this practice of considering only the spirit of the law without considering the legal provisions seems inconsistent with the trend where, with historical and social development, the operability of abstract legal principles or spirits in specific affairs gradually decreases; moreover, natural law itself can be traced back to the Ancient Greek period thousands of years ago. The first part of his statement is more akin to an argumentation of the basis of the basis for his own judgment; this is very similar to the subsequent judges, all starting from the periphery and gradually approaching the core argumentation, but these procedures seem to have no distinct correlation with the legal schools they represent. In his natural law view, law and morality are entangled together. In short, his final view is that, according to the legal spirit of natural law, self-defense is not guilty.
The fourth judge is the only one among Fuller’s five judges to render a guilty verdict, namely Legal Positivism, tending to rely completely on the law itself in the judgment, severing the relationship between law and morality; this point is completely contrary to China’s rule of law theory and also to natural law. Legal positivism emphasizes that moral considerations are irrelevant to the application of statutes; it believes that the only question before the court is to confirm whether the defendants willfully took the life of another. At the same time, by pointing out that “not one of a hundred statutes has such a single purpose, and the purpose of nearly every statute is interpreted differently by sponsors of different classes” (p. 36), the judge to a certain extent negated the singularity of legal spirit and legislative intent pursued by natural law. However, purely pursuing the law itself and severing morality is similar to the thought of the Legalists in ancient China, and perhaps is not suitable for the development of today’s society. Simultaneously emphasizing legislative supremacy seems likely to lead to “bad laws” causing excessive harm.
The fifth judge “judges by common sense” (p. 40), but relying purely on common sense causes the correctness of the judgment to depend too heavily on the correctness of common sense, which might lead to insufficient respect for the sanctity of the law. At the same time, if one respects too much the fact that “about ninety percent of people believe the defendants should be pardoned or released with a token punishment” (p. 43), this might lead to too many factors influencing the law, making it difficult for justice to be administered in certain circumstances, or even leading to tragedies like the Cultural Revolution in extreme cases. However, as far as this case is concerned, casting aside cumbersome and obscure legal reasoning and relying on common sense seems to have indeed achieved the effect of: “Mountains multiply and streams double back, one doubts there be a road; yet amidst dark willows and blooming flowers, another village appears.” And in this judge’s statement, law and morality possess an equally very close relationship.
In Suber’s sequel, there are two diametrically opposed viewpoints: Justice Tally’s utilitarian stance and Justice Trumpet’s stance on the pricelessness of life. These two viewpoints can also introduce the famous thought experiment in ethics, the Trolley Problem. Justice Tally likens the actions of the cave survivors to “a profitable ‘bargain’” (p. 88) and uses limit thinking to argue that preserving more people is often advantageous. But this is obviously difficult for human empathy to easily accept, because in Justice Tally’s argumentation, humans become a means to preserve the lives of companions rather than the life to be preserved, that is, the end. Just as Kant taught us, “Man cannot be a means, man can only be an end.” But it is undeniable that such pragmatism can indeed solve problems at times. Justice Trumpet’s viewpoint emphasizing the supreme value of life is also similar to the legal positivism viewpoint of the fourth judge, and both also gave the same guilty verdict. After all, what the law itself requires is the supremacy of the value of life.
The Chief Justice Burnham penned by Suber emphasizes legal reasoning and the law itself, “we must discover what the law requires” (p. 55), which is also similar to the legal positivism viewpoint of the fourth judge penned by Fuller. However, if one relies purely on abstract legal reasoning while totally disregarding the facts, one will inevitably reach absurd conclusions, such as “they could eat their own fingers, toes, earlobes or drink their own blood”; this is perhaps also the reason why US Supreme Court Justice Holmes said in the opening of The Common Law: “The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.”
Beyond debating whether the survivors were guilty, the judges also debated throughout whether the survivors’ actions constituted self-defense, excessive defense, or necessity; they also debated from angles such as procedural fairness, justice, and substance whether the practice of casting lots to decide death was appropriate, which also took up a considerable amount of space. This perhaps also reflects the judicial characteristic of the West valuing legal reasoning. At the same time, similar to Fuller, the last judge penned by Suber also withdrew from the judgment, though not because of indecision but due to a conflict of interest. After all, if a conflict of interest exists, whether one makes a judgment contrary to one’s own interests or not, it is contrary to impartiality.
In summary, Fuller ingeniously used the case of the cave explorers to display for us the main viewpoints of several major Western legal schools before the last century. It allowed me to see the whole through the part; though it was but a glimpse of a leopard through a tube, I still benefited immensely.
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