Scalia and the Law of Rules in Decision Making

Guns and Such

Are there any sources that add a different perspective to the blog below?

One source that could add a different perspective to the blog is Scalia (1989) who describes the rule of law as a law of rules. This provides a helpful lens that can be added to the lenses described by the author already. What Scalia (1989) identifies as fairness in justice is that which the author in the blog sees as customers’ rights compared to the rights of the business. The laws of the land may allow customers to conceal carry, but the business also has the right to set its own policy—and the big issue in the article is how it should set policy so as to consider its customers.

That is where Scalia’s (1989) article can be seen as helpful: Scalia states that the rule of law should be balanced by a consideration of factors on both sides, as well as by personal discretion. In other words, the individual view has some importance in these matters and should not be discounted. The law is not something that should be hard like a hammer but rather something that should be flexible and helpful because it is there to guide and support society—not to hit it over the head or harm it (Scalia, 1989).

Another helpful source is that of Lindgren (2014), who notes that it is not so much the rule or law that shapes policy or society but rather the character of the individual person. So for gun ownership or concealed carry issues, the law is not always going to apply because there may be those who dismiss the law as inappropriate or invalid based on their own interpretation of their rights according to the constitution. So what this source reveals is that one ought to consider that individual people have their own dispositions and consciences and that these can be more powerful than any written rule or law on the books. So it really does not matter much what the policy is in all cases, for what matters most is how the individual character is formed and developed.

References

Lindgren, J. (2014). Foreword: The Past and Future of Guns. J. Crim. L. &

Criminology, 104, 705.

Scalia, A. (1989). The rule of law as a law of rules. U. Chi. l. reV., 56, 1175.

Is there an argument against the information below?

An argument against using Aristotle’s Rules of Deliberation approach for analyzing the gun policy at Hot Coffee is that “it does not guarantee that the right decision will be made” as the author points out. The Rules of Deliberation give a way for one to evaluate pros, cons, and consequences, but there is not necessarily a good enough moral guide for making the evaluation inherent in the approach. Some more useful information is needed that can guide the decision-maker, such as the deontological perspective, which informs a person of the morality of an action based on the extent to which it corresponds with one’s duty.

In other words, there should be a sense of honoring one’s duty inscribed into the decision-making process, and no statistics are necessarily going to allow one to skip that sense. For instance, the author examines that helpful information might be to obtain stats on who supports carrying guns and who does not—but how does this impact the business owner’s duty or understanding that duty in moral terms? Moreover, the stats have no real bearing on the pros and cons—as they should be self-evident, and all one needs to consider is how a policy based on them will have consequences. The way to view these consequences is to consider them from the point of view of law of rules, like that supplied by Scalia (1989), because that affords the fairest way to consider, in all flexibility, the various facets of a case. In so doing, one can be most assured of making a decision that is best guaranteed to be the right one.