Moral assessments in judicial reasoning

Abstract

There are two questions posed in this text: (i) does the formulation of moral assessments by judges require from them any special moral competences and (ii) does the moral reasoning have a character of rational reasoning. Answering the first question we claim that when it comes to formulating moral assessments, judges do not have any special moral competences to adjudicate in difficult moral dilemmas. Thus there is no reason to state that moral thinking experiments which are an inseparable element of a judge’s reasoning process, allow to adopt a thesis that the reasoning of judges is morally better or more moral than the reasoning of other entities operating in the public sphere. Answering the second question, we believe that since people are generally unaware of what influences their moral judgements, it may also be so that the judges may not know what makes them adopt and pursue certain moral judgements, when they believe, erroneously, that their decisions have been rationally made. Intuition plays an important role in the making of moral judgements, also when it comes to the legal profession, since the latter are expected to base their attitudes on rational reasoning and an objective consideration of differing arguments.