Professor Elliot Warren began the first lecture of “Justice” with a promise and a trap.
“I’m not here to tell you what to think,” he said, pacing in front of a packed auditorium. “I’m here to make you notice what you already believe—especially when it gets uncomfortable.”
He clicked his remote and projected a simple drawing: a trolley on a track, five stick figures ahead, a switch leading to a side track with one person. “You’re the driver,” Elliot said. “The brakes fail. If you do nothing, five die. If you turn the wheel, one dies. What do you do?”
Hands shot up. Most students chose to steer—sacrificing one to save five. Elliot nodded like he’d expected it. “So,” he said, “you’re comfortable with a moral math problem. Outcomes matter.”
He changed the slide. Now it was a bridge. A trolley again, five workers again—except this time there was no switch. A large man leaned over the railing beside a bystander.
“You’re the bystander,” Elliot said. “You can push him onto the tracks. His body stops the trolley. Five live. He dies. Do you push?”
The room shifted. People laughed nervously. A few whispered, “No way.”
Elliot didn’t argue. He waited, letting the silence do the work. “Interesting,” he said. “Same numbers. Different feeling. Why?”
A student in the front row, Maya Chen, spoke up. “Because in the first one, you redirect harm,” she said. “In the second, you cause it.”
Elliot smiled. “Is that a real distinction,” he asked, “or a psychological one?”
He moved fast, layering dilemmas like weights. An ER doctor choosing between one critically injured patient and five moderately injured ones. Most students saved the five. Then he offered the transplant case: kill one healthy patient to harvest organs and save five dying people.
The auditorium recoiled. Even students who’d been confidently “utilitarian” a minute earlier refused. “That’s murder,” someone said. “You can’t do that.”
Elliot wrote two words on the board: OUTCOMES and DUTIES.
“Now we’re cooking,” he said. “The tension between consequentialist reasoning—Bentham’s style of maximizing welfare—and categorical constraints—Kant’s style of treating persons as ends, not mere means.”
Then he pivoted from hypotheticals to a real case. “In 1884,” he said, “a yacht sank. Four men survived in a lifeboat. Weeks passed. Starvation set in. They killed the weakest—an orphaned cabin boy—and ate him. Three survived. In court, they argued necessity: one died so three could live.”
The room went quiet in a new way. This wasn’t stick figures. This was a boy with a name and a pulse.
Elliot underlined necessity on the board. “The question,” he said, “is whether necessity makes moral wrongs right.”
A student in the back muttered, “What else could they do?”
Elliot turned. “Exactly,” he said. “And now you’re inside the problem.”
He closed his laptop halfway, like a judge about to speak a verdict. “Next class,” he said, “we won’t start with philosophy. We’ll start with the court’s decision. And I want you to imagine being the judge—because your answer will expose what you think justice is.”
As students stood to leave, Elliot added one last sentence, almost casual:
“By the way… the court did not accept necessity.”
The room froze again.
If necessity didn’t excuse killing one to save three in real life, why do so many of us excuse killing one to save five in theory—and what does that say about what we’re really defending?
Part 2
The next lecture began with the sound of paper.
Professor Elliot Warren held up a photocopy of the 1884 decision—Queen v. Dudley and Stephens—like it was evidence in a trial. “Before we do any philosophy,” he said, “we’re going to do law.”
He summarized the facts without theatrics: shipwreck, lifeboat, starvation, a cabin boy named Richard Parker, a knife, a prayer, and then death. “They argued necessity,” Elliot said, “and the public sympathized. Many people felt: they had no choice.”
He wrote a sentence on the board: “Necessity is not a defense to murder.”
“Why would a court say that?” he asked. “Isn’t law supposed to reflect common sense?”
Maya Chen raised her hand again. “Because if you allow necessity,” she said, “then anyone can claim they ‘had’ to kill.”
Elliot nodded. “The slippery slope argument,” he said. “But there’s more.”
He divided the room into groups and gave them roles: judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and juror. Their assignment was to argue—not what they personally felt, but what justice required. The room buzzed, and Elliot walked between rows like a referee.
One group’s “defense attorney,” a student named Jordan Patel, argued pure outcome: “Three lives saved. One life lost. Net gain. If we punish them, we punish survival itself.”
Another group’s “prosecutor,” Sofia Reyes, pushed back: “They didn’t draw lots. They chose the weakest. That means someone’s vulnerability became his death sentence.”
Elliot stopped at Sofia’s row. “Notice that,” he said. “Choice matters. Process matters. Not just outcome.”
Then he returned to the trolley. “In the driver case,” he said, “you steer. In the bridge case, you refuse to push. In the transplant case, you refuse to harvest. Your intuitions suggest you accept tradeoffs sometimes but reject using a person as a tool.”
He wrote MEANS in big letters.
“Bentham might say, ‘What matters is happiness and suffering.’ Kant might say, ‘Some actions are wrong even if they produce good outcomes.’”
A student asked, “So which one is right?”
Elliot smiled. “If I answer that, you’ll stop thinking. Instead, ask: what principle explains your judgments across cases?”
He made them test themselves. If you’d divert the trolley, would you also push the man? If you’d save five in the ER, why not in transplant? If you’d punish shipwreck survivors, why excuse wartime decisions that sacrifice a few for many?
The class grew uncomfortable, which Elliot treated as progress.
Then he introduced the most unsettling point: “Your moral reactions may be partly psychological,” he said, “shaped by distance, intention, and how direct the harm feels.”
He didn’t say this to dismiss morality, but to complicate it. “If your conscience changes with framing,” he asked, “is your principle real—or just preference wearing a moral costume?”
Near the end, Elliot told a story about an emergency dispatcher deciding which ambulance to send first. “Real life doesn’t pause for perfect principles,” he said. “But law still has to draw lines.”
He returned to Dudley and Stephens. The court sentenced them, but later commuted their punishment. “Law affirmed a rule,” he said, “while mercy adjusted the outcome. That combination—principle plus discretion—is one way a society tries to be just.”
As students packed up, Maya stayed behind. “Professor,” she said, “I keep thinking about the cabin boy. People call him ‘the weakest,’ like that’s his identity.”
Elliot nodded slowly. “That’s the danger,” he said. “Once you label someone a ‘means,’ it becomes easier to treat them as one.”
He paused, then added a twist: “Next time, we’ll ask whether utilitarianism can protect the vulnerable better than Kant can. And we’ll do it with modern cases—triage, algorithms, and public policy.”
Maya blinked. “So this isn’t just thought experiments.”
Elliot’s smile was small. “It never was.”
If justice is partly about rules and partly about mercy, where do we draw the line when real lives are on the scale?
Part 3
By the third lecture, the students stopped laughing nervously. They arrived braced, like people who knew the questions would follow them home.
Professor Elliot Warren began with a confession. “When you first heard the trolley problem,” he said, “many of you treated it like a clever puzzle. But you’re starting to see what it really is: a mirror.”
He projected three headlines—modern versions of old dilemmas: hospital triage during shortages, algorithmic policing, disaster evacuations. “These are trolley problems with paperwork,” he said. “And the people on the tracks are not stick figures. They’re neighbors.”
He asked the class to revisit their earlier votes. Many had changed their minds. Some had hardened theirs. Elliot didn’t shame either group. He made them explain themselves.
Maya spoke carefully. “I still think outcomes matter,” she said. “But I’m scared of any system that treats certain people as acceptable losses.”
Elliot nodded. “That fear is rational,” he said. “Utilitarianism can become cruel if it ignores distribution—who bears the costs and who enjoys the benefits.”
He introduced a key idea without jargon: if a policy maximizes total welfare but consistently harms the same vulnerable group, can it be called just? “A society can’t call itself fair,” he said, “if ‘the few’ are always the same people.”
Then he turned to Kant. “Kant’s constraint—never use persons merely as means—sounds protective,” Elliot said. “But it can also be rigid. In emergencies, rigid rules can produce preventable deaths.”
He made the class confront that tension honestly. The driver case, the bridge case, the transplant case—each one forced them to decide what kind of moral agents they wanted to be when consequences and principles collided.
Elliot ended with the most practical lesson of the course: “Justice,” he said, “is not just a set of answers. It’s a discipline of reasoning in public—where you owe others an explanation they could accept even if they disagree.”
He asked them to practice that. Not just “I feel,” but “I can defend.” Not just “It’s obvious,” but “Here’s why.” He reminded them that moral disagreement isn’t always ignorance—sometimes it’s competing values.
Before dismissing class, Elliot returned to the cabin boy. “Richard Parker had no vote,” he said. “No voice. And yet, his death became a case that shaped law for generations.”
He let that settle, then shifted to the present. “Your choices—what you support, what you tolerate, what you ignore—shape who gets protected and who gets treated as disposable. That’s why this course matters.”
Students filed out more slowly than before. Some looked thoughtful. Some looked unsettled. That, Elliot believed, was appropriate.
Maya lingered at the door. “So what do we do with all this?” she asked.
Elliot didn’t give her a slogan. “Start small,” he said. “Notice who your ‘math’ forgets. Ask who pays. Ask who benefits. Then speak.”
And because Americans love conclusions, he gave them one line they could remember without simplifying the truth:
“Justice is what you build when you refuse to let the vulnerable disappear from the calculation.”
If this made you think, share it, comment your view, and debate kindly—your reasoning shapes our world more than you realize.
