NCJ Number
153646
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Education Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: (Fall 1994) Pages: 189-203
Date Published
1994
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This paper explains that the traditional Western "fallback" positions on discretion and moral judgment embrace the theories of natural law and prudence.
Abstract
In their desire to combat what they perceive to be a state of cultural illiteracy in the field of criminal justice ethics, Souryal and Potts recommend a revision of criminal justice curricula to include courses on the history of Western political philosophy. In the past masters of political philosophy, they hope to find an effective "fallback" position on questions of moral judgment and discretion. This essay locates that position in the traditional Western theories of natural law and prudence. For such past masters as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Edmund Burke, natural law serves as the source of transcendent values for fallible human beings, who require immutable moral goals towards which to strive. According to these thinkers, prudence serves to translate eternity into the here and now and to adapt fixed rules to new situations. Aristotle devises a strategy to extract some degree of natural law-based decency from entrenched tyrants by manipulating their fear of revolution. Aquinas proposes that legislators create statute laws from natural law standards and then adjust those statutes to citizens' ability to obey them. Burke admonishes French philosophers for forcing theoretically just democratic values on a society unprepared for democracy. The theories of natural law and prudence are based on a view of human nature that is neither idealistic, cynical, nor pragmatic. This view is less willing to compromise ideals than is cynicism and pragmatism; it is less willing to ignore extenuating circumstances than is idealism. This view, moreover, neither overestimates nor underestimates individuals' ability to lead their own lives and to create a stable, moral society. Criminal justice educators who may consider political philosophy to be irrelevant and too abstract for their discipline should consider the issue of honest officers confronting police corruption. An analysis of this concrete problem from the perspective of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Burke will produce realistic "fallback" positions on discretion and moral judgment, for which criminal justice administrators have expressed a need and which Souryal and Potts' students could endorse. 23 references