Tragic Choice as a Legal Concept

Abstract

Although tragic choices are a common phenomenon in human experience, dominant conceptions of legal reasoning in Western constitutional democracies do not account for the tragic character of legal choices. These conceptions are therefore highly reassuring both for the legal system as a whole as well as for the legal agents concerned.

In this paper it is argued that conceptions of legal reasoning should make room for the concept of tragic legal choice. In order to grasp the substantial bearing of this claim, the main characteristics of the concept of a tragic legal choice will also be fleshed out.

Keywords: tragedy and law, moral dilemmas, tragic choice, hard cases, plurality of values, legal reasoning