The Hard Case: Billy Budd and the Judgment Intuitive

This article explores the importance of a certain form of intuitive reasoning to hard cases, ambiguous situations, and problems that seem to resist the straightforward application of a clear rule. Certain aspects of the processes of judgment come into sharpest relief in those cases where justice seems to require that we bend, modify, or repress the applicable rules. Judges have often been judged not only by virtue of their adherence to the procedures and norms of law but also in regard to their ability to qualify or moderate or even subvert such rules. Melville's posthumous novel, Billy Budd, I argue, offers a revealing and even iconic instance of the necessity of intuitive reasoning to these more arduous and uncertain forms of judgment.