Ponderings on Moral Law and Justice
I have been watching Doctor Who. In Season 1 Episode 11, the time lords take the last remaining member of the Slitheen family aboard the TARDIS to return her to her home planet and save the earth from her scheme to destroy it. The prisoner tells her captors they are taking her to her execution. The character Mickey tells her she deserves it. She responds that he is very quick to assume so. She says, "You're awfully quick to soak your hands in my blood, which makes you better than me how, exactly?" On one hand, an answer might be that the Slitheen's fate has been decided by the authority of Law - who are the time lords to interfere with what has been deemed just? In a subsequent scene, when the Slitheen describes the tortuous way in which she will be executed, the doctor stoically tells her, "I don't make the law." She responds, "But you deliver it. Will you stay to watch?" On the other hand, most people who take up a cause of "justice...