It seems I am chronically unable to get my questions posted here. Being stubborn as I am, I´ll try with another one: An Oxford professor of law let a question hanging at the end of a lecture some months ago: Whether or not it is possible to clearly distinguish when the interpretation of a statement is based on what is actually implied, and when it is not. One thing is obviously analyzing the literal meaning of a statement in isolation, but few rules are without exception even when no literal exception is provided. The example given was somewhat similar to this: 1. An army officer gives a soldier a command to bomb a vehicle. 2. The soldier later observes that the vehicle transports school children, and not enemy combatants, as the soldier assumed it would. Both the soldier and the officer are familiar to international law, prohibiting indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on civilians. The directive however is in its literal form without exception. Can one really say that regard to the law is implied in the statement, or is it something the soldier supplements the statement with, when he decides not to bomb the vehicle? This sort of question obviously has implications for legal interpretation in general. But what is the "philosophical" way of drawing the line? Much appreciated.

If a person pushes a fat man into an on coming trolley and in doing so prevents five people from being killing should that person be tried for murder? Is the law clear on whether this was murder? If it clear then wouldn't it be clear that switching tracks to avoid the death of five people but leading to the death of one person is also murder? Or does the law objectively determine that the "intent" in that instance is different than in the other instance?

Should law enforcement be allowed to lie to suspects during interrogation?

As a student of law with a vivid interest in logic (in a broad sense), I find myself intrigued by the possibility of combining these two subjects. From what I so far have found, the implementation of the latter field of thought to legal discipline is mostly only done with regard to informal logic, with fairly simple overviews of the rules of inference etc.; the scope is mostly one aimed to serve the practical law-man in, say, procedural contexts. The ones that serve the academic community, seem not to be quite technical. Yet, the legal system seems highly infested with what logic is concerned. The relation between propositions of facts and norms, the norms being constructed with the help of sentential connectives, say, material conditionals or bi-conditionals to name just a few. Yet other phenomena could be named: judgments and other propositional attitudes, the normative "it is the case that", whose descriptive accuracy depends on what legal institution one is in(e.g. penal-law demands higher probability for stating that something ´is a fact´ than in contract law), hypothesizing etc.. It all seems to permit the introduction of logic and other philosophical analytaical tools for general clarifications of ´what is happening´. I have come over some works done in the sociology of law that have taken this up analyzing ´judgements´ in a legal context with the help of Gotthard Günthers poly-contextural logic etc. Is there any literature you could recommend? Is there any way in which you see this leading to any fruitful results? If so, in what way? I am well aware that the phenomena described in the legal system are not law-specific so to speak, but are in many ways connected with the general structure and use of language.

How does one draw the line between the sort of morality a legal system should enforce, and the sort of morality the legal system should leave to its own devices? It seems that there are some cases where the law should clearly enforce morality (special laws against child abuse, for example), yet there are clearly other cases where the law doesn't and shouldn't have much to say (for example, the law does not systematically punish people who lie to their spouses, and most would probably argue that it shouldn't). But what is the distinction between the two sides of the boundary?

Would it be ethical for law enforcement agents to specifically target people who are on social security for violations of drug laws?

Can ethics be a sufficient condition for becoming a lifelong "law-abiding" citizen? What ethical standards could be there to ensure life under legal boundaries? Or if one needs some very basic legal knowledge to achieve that being, what combination of ethics and law is most sensible for someone not pursuing a career in law? Or perhaps the question should be posed as, "How much law do we need to know in our lives, and how much do we use ethics to fill the rest of our moral consciousness?" Thank you!

Should a parent report their own children to the police if they are aware that the child has commited a criminal offence. Does the age of the child or the seriousness of the crime matter. Example should you report your child if you suspect they have commited shoplifting or should you only report them for serious crimes like armed ronbbery. What about other family relations such as your brother or cousin commiting criminal acts. Do you owe any loyalty to your family or is it more important to obey the law. Michael.

The law currently defines sexual harassment as "unwanted sexual attention. There is more to the definition but in my own workplace the policy specifically defines sexual harassment as "any unwanted sexual attention". However I recently went out on a date with a girl that I wasn't interested in having "casual sex" with. She however proposed that we do just that. I therefor received "unwanted" sexual attention from her. However, I don't believe that I was harassed one bit. I have seen numerous website that declare dogmatically that women have a "right" to not experience "unwanted" sexual attention. I can't help but to think to myself that that is sheer lunacy. In my mind nobody has a right to not experience "unwanted" sexual attention and that "unwanted" sexual attention is not even a big deal. The term "unwanted" is a fairly neutral term and many things which are neither unpleasant nor pleasant can fit into that category. So how can such a obviously poorly defined definition of sexual harassment continue to persist as law and be used as workplace guidelines? I personally believe that I have a right (perhaps even a constitutional first amendment right) to show a sexual interest toward my colleagues (and that involves the risk that I will be rejected) and I feel that the way that the law currently defines sexual harassment is blatantly absurd and unfair.

When someone is indicted for a crime, it's standard for newspaper reports to state that he only "allegedly" did whatever he is accused of doing. But suppose that the guilt of the defendant is extremely well confirmed (a thousand witnesses saw him, and we have an HD-quality recording of the incident). If the trial has yet to arrive at a verdict, should reporters still insist upon use of the "alleged" qualification? In other words, should standards of assertion in journalism be tied to standards of assertion in judicial proceedings?