On the first day of the Justice course at Brookfield University, Professor Richard Coleman surprised his students by skipping the syllabus. Instead, he drew a simple diagram on the board: two railway tracks splitting in opposite directions.
“Imagine you are Ethan Walker, a trolley operator,” Coleman said. “Your brakes fail. Five workers are repairing the main track. On the side track, there is only one person. You can pull a lever. What do you do?”
The lecture hall buzzed. Phones lit up as students voted anonymously. When the results appeared, the answer was clear: most chose to pull the lever. One life lost, five saved. Ethan’s choice felt tragic but necessary.
Coleman nodded, then erased the board. He drew a bridge instead.
“Now imagine you are Sarah Mitchell, standing on a bridge above the tracks. Below you, the same five workers. Next to you stands Thomas Reed, a heavy man leaning on the railing. If you push him, his body will stop the trolley. Five will live. He will die.”
The room went silent. The same students who had confidently sacrificed one life minutes earlier now hesitated. When the votes appeared, nearly everyone rejected pushing Thomas.
Coleman didn’t explain. He moved on.
He told them about Dr. Emily Carter, an emergency physician during a highway pileup. One patient was critically injured and would consume all available resources. Five others were injured but treatable if attended quickly. Dr. Carter chose to save the five. The class largely agreed with her decision.
Then came the final case. Dr. Jonathan Pierce, a transplant surgeon, had five patients who would die within days without new organs. A healthy man, Mark Ellison, came in for a routine checkup. Killing Mark would save five lives.
This time, the response was immediate and overwhelming: absolutely not.
Coleman finally spoke. “Notice something,” he said calmly. “You are willing to let one person die, willing to redirect danger, willing to allocate limited resources—but you refuse to kill an innocent person directly, even when the math is the same.”
Students shifted in their seats.
“So what changed?” he asked. “The numbers didn’t. Only your role did.”
He explained nothing further. Instead, he ended the lecture with a warning.
“This course will not give you comfort. It will take away the certainty you think you have.”
As the bell rang, Daniel Brooks, a second-year political science major, remained seated. The scenarios replayed in his mind. He realized the class was not about hypotheticals. Judges, doctors, and ordinary citizens face versions of these choices every day.
As Daniel stood to leave, Coleman added one final sentence:
“Justice begins the moment your instincts fail you.”
The tension lingered in the room long after the students walked out.
Over the following weeks, the Justice course grew heavier. Professor Coleman began attaching names to the instincts students had revealed without knowing it.
He introduced Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher who believed moral decisions should aim to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Daniel recognized Bentham immediately. Bentham was the lever. Bentham was Dr. Carter choosing five patients over one. Bentham was every policy decision that treated human lives as numbers to be balanced.
Coleman presented a real court case involving Laura Simmons, a city official who ordered the evacuation and demolition of a structurally unsound apartment building. Hundreds were displaced. No one was injured. The court upheld her decision. Bentham’s logic had won.
But then Coleman shifted direction.
He introduced Immanuel Kant, whose philosophy rejected outcome-based reasoning. Kant believed people must never be used merely as a means to an end. According to Kant, Mark Ellison could never be sacrificed, no matter how many lives his organs might save.
To test this, Coleman told another story. Paul Henderson hid his neighbor from a violent ex-partner. When the attacker knocked on the door and asked where she was, Paul lied. The lie saved a life.
Most students applauded Paul’s choice.
Coleman challenged them. “If lying is acceptable when it produces good outcomes, why isn’t killing?”
The room erupted. Some students argued that killing crossed a permanent moral boundary. Others claimed refusing to act was simply another form of choice—one with consequences.
Daniel found himself torn. Bentham felt practical. Kant felt protective. Both made sense. Both failed in different ways.
Outside class, Daniel noticed how the course reshaped his thinking. News stories about hospital shortages, self-driving car accidents, and military decisions no longer felt distant. Each one mirrored the trolley problem. Someone always stood at the lever, whether visible or not.
Mid-semester, Coleman assigned a paper: Describe a situation where no moral calculation can justify crossing a certain line.
Daniel struggled. He thought about law enforcement, warfare, healthcare. Every line seemed movable under pressure. And yet, the idea of killing an innocent person deliberately still felt unbearable.
He realized something unsettling: morality wasn’t about finding clean answers. It was about choosing which regrets you were willing to live with.
For the first time, Daniel understood why judges hesitate, why doctors burn out, and why lawmakers argue endlessly. Justice wasn’t a formula. It was a burden.
On the final day, Professor Coleman returned to the original diagram of the tracks.
“I won’t ask you what the right answer is,” he said. “I’ll ask you something harder. Who should bear responsibility?”
Hands slowly rose. Daniel spoke about his paper and admitted he no longer trusted simple solutions. “The law doesn’t remove moral responsibility,” he said. “It just hides it.”
Coleman nodded.
He closed the course with the historic case of Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, where shipwrecked sailors killed a cabin boy to survive. The court rejected necessity as a defense. Survival did not justify murder.
Coleman asked them to imagine being the judge—knowing public opinion was sympathetic, knowing punishment might seem cruel, and knowing that excusing the act could legitimize killing the weakest in desperate times.
“There is no lever here,” Coleman said. “Only judgment.”
After the course ended, Daniel carried these questions into everyday life. He noticed how often people demanded simple answers to complex moral problems. He noticed how easily society praised results while ignoring methods.
The course never told him what to choose. It taught him something more unsettling: whatever he chose, he would have to own it.
Justice, Daniel realized, was not about being right. It was about being accountable.
What would you choose—and why? Share your perspective, challenge others respectfully, and join the conversation shaping how America thinks about justice.
