Tragic Lives: On the Incompatibility of Law and Ethics

A common view, shared by legal theorists and ordinary people, is that there is and should be a close, positive relation between ethics and law, that law should, and commonly does, embody ethical principles. There is certainly some validity in this view. But there is at least as much error as validity, for ethics and law are also deeply opposed. I am not referring here to contingent oppositions—particular laws that are immoral, particular judges who are corrupt. I am referring to a fundamental contradiction between the principles that guide ethical adjudication and those that guide legal action. This contradiction is one of the tensions that can make human life tragic. As such, it is also bound up with the development of tragedy in art. The following essay begins by examining the irreconcilability of law and ethics. It then takes up the relation of this to tragedy in both literature and life. It concludes by considering two works— one modern (Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue V), one ancient (Aeschylus’ Eumenides)—that treat this tragic irreconcilability and that suggest how ethical considerations might curb the otherwise inevitable cruelties of law.