Having read about Clarence Darrow’s defense of Leopold and

Having read about Clarence Darrow s defense of Leopold and.
Having read about Clarence Darrow s defense of Leopold and Loeb on p. 132-134 in your text, do you agree with the arguments he presented, for instance, that they were no more responsible for their crime than they were for the color of their eyes (p. 132) ? Do you agree with the sentence that Leopold and Loeb were given? Why or why not? If you were responsible for handing down their sentence, what punishment would you have given Leopold and Loeb? Why? Do you agree with the hard determinist that our choices are the inevitable result of causes beyond our control? Your assignment is to write an original response, at least 300 words, to these questions. (The Philosophical Journey, An Interactive Approach, Sixth Edition, By: Lawed)PAGES 132-134P. 132Remember that both the hard determinist and the defender of free will (the libertarian)are incompatibilists because they agree with the statement that if we are determined, thenwe lack the freedom necessary to be morally responsible. They would also both agree withthe statement that if we are not determined, then we do have the freedom necessary to bemorally responsible. For both the hard determinist and the libertarian, metaphysical free-dom is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Even if we have circumstantial free-dom when we act (e.g., no one is holding a gun to our head), if our will is not free ofdetermining causes, then we can no more be held responsible for our actions than we canfor the genes we have inherited. Of course, the hard determinist and the libertarian differover the first clause of each statement, so they differ in their conclusions concerning ourcapacity to be morally responsible. Although the hard determinists recognize that we domake choices, they believe these choices result from our personality, values, interests,desires, or motives, which are ultimately the products of deterministic causes. For thisreason, moral responsibility, according to the hard determinist, is not a human possibility.A good example of the hard determinists denial of moral responsibility can be found inthe courtroom strategies of Clarence Darrow (1857 1938), one of America s most famouscriminal attorneys. In a celebrated case, Darrow defended two teenagers for murdering a14-year-old boy. The confessed killers were Nathan Leopold Jr. (age 19) and Richard Loeb(age 18). Both came from wealthy Chicago families and were brilliant students; Leopoldhad already graduated from the University of Chicago and Loeb from the University ofMichigan. The murder was the result of an intellectual experiment in which theyattempted to commit the perfect crime. When they were captured, an outraged publicdemanded the death penalty. However, Clarence Darrow argued that the two boys were thehelpless victims of their heredity and environment. Hence, they were no more responsiblefor their crime, he said, than they were for the color of their eyes. After Darrow had spokenfor 12 hours presenting his final arguments, the silence of the courtroom was broken onlyby the judge s weeping. The jury was moved by his arguments and chose life sentences forthe boys over the death penalty. The following passage is an excerpt from Darrow s sum-mation. Find the phrases that indicate that Darrow was not only a determinist, but a harddeterminist as well. P.133FROM CLARENCE DARROWThe Leopold and Loeb Trial 35This weary old world goes on, begetting, with birth and with living and with death; andall of it is blind from the beginning to the end. I do not know what it was that madethese boys do this mad act, but I do know there is a reason for it. I know that they didnot beget themselves. I know that any one of an infinite number of causes reaching backto the beginning might be working out in these boy s minds, whom you are asked tohang in malice and in hatred and injustice. . . .Nature is strong and she is pitiless. She works in her own mysterious way, and we areher victims. We have not much to do with it ourselves. Nature takes this job in hand,and we play our parts. In the words of Omar Khayyam, we are only:But helpless pieces in the game He playsUpon this checkerboard of nights and days;Hither and thither moves and checks, and slays,And one by one back in the closet lays.What had this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was not his ownmother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not sur-round himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to becompelled to pay. . . .I know that one of two things happened to Richard Loeb: that this terrible crime wasinherent in his organism, and came from some ancestor; or that it came through his edu-cation and his training after he was born. . . .To believe that any boy is responsible for himself or his early training is an absurditythat no lawyer or judge should be guilty of today. Somewhere this came to the boy. If hisfailing came from his heredity, I do not know where or how. None of us are bred perfectand pure; and the color of our hair, the color of our eyes, our stature, the weight andfineness of our brain, and everything about us could, with full knowledge, be traced withabsolute certainty to somewhere. . . .If it did not come that way, then I know that if he was normal, if he had beenunderstood, if he had been trained as he should have been it would not havehappened. . . .Every effort to protect society is an effort toward training the youth to keep the path.Every bit of training in the world proves it, and it likewise proves that it sometimes fails.I know that if this boy had been understood and properly trained properly for him and the training that he got might have been the very best for someone; but if it hadbeen the proper training for him he would not be in this courtroom today with thenoose above his head. If there is responsibility anywhere, it is back of him; somewhere inthe infinite number of his ancestors, or in his surroundings, or in both. And I submit,Your Honor, that under every principle of natural justice, under every principle of con-science, of right, and of law, he should not be made responsible for the acts of someoneelse.What are the practical consequences of such a view? Should we release all the criminalsfrom jail, since they were not morally responsible for their crimes any more than they werefor their eye color? Darrow s position was that we should cure the ills in society that causecriminal behavior. Most hard determinists claim that the criminal is someone with a psy-chological problem who should be treated the way we treat someone who has a physicaldisease. We confine someone with an infectious disease to prevent harm to others even though the patient may not have done anything to contract the disease. Furthermore, wewould try to cure the patient so that he or she no longer carries the infection.As Butler s satirical piece suggests, the fact that you are a law-abiding citizen and othersare criminals is the result of differences between your background and those of criminals,just as there are differences between a person who came from a healthy home and one whocame from a disease-ridden home. How many social psychopaths came from normal, lov-ing homes? Hence, the hard determinist would say that to protect society, it is reasonableto confine criminals if they cannot help but commit crimes. The unpleasant consequencesof crime will be determining causes that will help prevent future crimes. While removedfrom society, the criminal can receive therapy or behavior modification that will change thepsychological state that resulted in the criminal act in the first place. What the hard deter-minist would not agree to is punishment for punishment s sake or punishment thatassumes the criminal had the freedom to do otherwise than he or she did.
Having read about Clarence Darrow s defense of Leopold and