Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2017 Law and Moral Dilemmas Bert I. Huang Columbia Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Bert I. Huang, Law and Moral Dilemmas, HARVARD LAW REVIEW, VOL. 130, P. 659, 2016 (2017). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2021 This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. BOOK REVIEW LAW AND MORAL DILEMMAS THE TROLLEY PROBLEM MYSTERIES. By F.M. Kamm. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xi, 270. $29.95. Reviewed by Bert I. Huang∗ INTRODUCTION A runaway trolley rushes toward five people standing on the tracks, and it will surely kill them all. Fortunately, you can reach a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track — but then you no- tice that one other person is standing there. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley to that side track, where it will kill one per- son instead of five? Is it not only morally permissible, but even moral- ly required? This classic thought experiment is a mainstay in the rep- ertoire of law school hypotheticals, often raised alongside cases about cannibalism at sea, tossing people from overcrowded lifeboats, or de- stroying buildings to save a city from fire.1 The liturgy of the trolley problem is one we all know.