Is the Concept of Utilitarianism a Golden Dream towards Justice?
![handle is hein.journals/ijlmhs6 and id is 1154 raw text is: International Journal of Law Management & Humanities
Is the Concept of Utilitarianism a Golden
Dream Towards Justice?
MUSKAAN SINGH'
ABSTRACT
Jeremy Bentham propounded the principle of Utilitarianism. Bentham's utilitarianism is a
theory, which believes in highest principle of morality whether personal or political
morality is to maximize the general welfare i.e. the collective happiness of the majority of
people. It talks about overall balance of pleasure over pain. Jeremy Bentham's
utilitarianism was devised for the welfare of people, but people started posing objection
towards Bentham.
John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham's disciple eventually in 1861 wrote the book
Utilitarianism in order to deal with these objections. This research paper aims to find out
how was utilitarianism planning to hold the society with its principles. And can the concept
of utilitarianism be used today in the 21st century judgments to deliver justice?
This paper will also try to dig into the objections raised towards utilitarianism and how
John Stuart Mill answered all these objections.
The research methodology used in the paper will be doctrinal in nature, with the use of
case laws, legal books, articles and legal databases.
Keywords: utilitarianism, society, morality, utility, happiness
I. INTRODUCTION
What do you do in a situation when you have to take an innocent life in order to save other
lives? Do you take the life of the innocent person? Or do you not? The question of death is
morally permissible or not?
Let's start with discussing a case Regina v. Dudley & Stephens2 also known as the lifeboat
case. This case revolves around the trial of two seamen named Dudley and Stephens who killed
a cabin boy named Richard Parker, when they were stranded in the sea 1000 miles away from
the shore. In the summer of 1884, four English sailors were aboard on a voyage in their ship
named Mignonette. Their ship had gone down in a storm in the South Atlantic, a thousand
miles from the land. The four men: Thomas Dudley the Captain, Edwin Stephens the first mate,
1 Author is an student at University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India.
2 R v. Dudley and Stephens, 14 Q.B.D. 273, 1884
© 2020. International Journal of Law Management & Humanities [ISSN 2581-5369]
1152
[Vol. 3 Iss 4; 1152]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ijlmhs6&div=110&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Is the Concept of Utilitarianism a Golden Dream towards Justice?
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