Dueling should be legalized

== Definition Addendum == I had not realized the terms were necessary, so I must break with good form by appending a pair of definitions central, I believe, to both our arguments: State Interest " A matter of public concern that is addressed by the government in law of policy (1). Specified here by the judicial application of discrimination in favor of the public benefit (see prior definition), subject to application of the Rational Basis Test. Rational Basis Test " A judicial standard of review enforcing a reasonable and not arbitrary basis for enacting a particular statute (2). My apologies for the late addition. The need was clear once I started working through the argument. == Introduction / Framework == I will argue that dueling should be illegal based on three rational bases serving the public benefit: 1)Dueling is counter to the state"s interest in the preservation of sapient life, 2)Dueling is unusually vulnerable to exploitation against personal interest via undue influence, 3)Dueling, unlike "safe" methods of conflict, inflicts egregious externalities on interested parties. == Framework == In any judicial system that is interested in promoting the social good, individual liberty must only be restricted when there is a rational basis to expect that an individual"s exercise of that right will impose unreasonable costs to other parties, whether proximally or to the society. This demands that whatever (dis)incentives a law imposes be balanced on all expected consequences on legitimate grounds. The reasonable standard for this applies to both of our arguments, as implied in your citations of utility arguments for dueling. I will deal with these utility arguments in my future rebuttal. == Public Benefit Argument " Preservation of Sapient Life == As established in a wide variety of case law (3), the social good is served by a legal framework that encourages the preservation of sapient life, even against a person"s wishes in many cases. The reasoning should be clear: Societies are made up of living people, and quality of life is enhanced at a very basic level by maximizing the duration of life. Although I might argue that qualify of life should weight the remaining duration quite heavily (there"s no use keeping a terminally comatose person alive), this does not apply to duelists, or indeed, to anyone whose life expectancy is reasonably expected to extend for some time with quality of life intact (Cruzan vs. Harmon, (4)). Every sapient entity"s life and contributions to society, tautologically, has both an additive and multiplicative effect on every other member of that society. So long as this effect is at least unambiguously neutral, we see a legitimate state interest in preventing suicide or even self-mutilation. If either practice was made legal, it would result in a noticeable loss of life and well-being for significant numbers that compose that state, and hence to all other members of that state. If we disallow suicide and self-harm for this reason, then by extension we must also disallow dueling, which has an identical effect save for it being assisted by a third party. This, by itself, might not weight heavily enough to overcome the liberty argument, but I have two complementary arguments. Note that this doesn"t even get into the moral value of the sanctity of life, which would be an innate reinforcement of the Public Benefit argument so long as one is willing to legislate morality (which I"m not, but completeness compels). == Public Benefit Argument " Undue Influence == State interest is served by preventing its constituents from being harmed, whether by loss of life, health, or property, by the actions of others. Society is materially harmed if there are no consequences for con men and tricksters who influence people into making "conscious choices" that go against their own self-interest, be it through inaccurate information, emotional manipulation, social pressure, extortion, and other "unfair playing fields". By your own admission, duels would be instigated by angry people. At least one of the participants would, in all probability, fit the definition of "emotionally compromised". Permitting a legal contract to be formed during such is already on shaky ground. The potential for abuse by manipulative people incentivized to kill is too great; we"ve already, as a society, decided it"s risky enough in cases of the terminally ill or permanently disabled, via assisted suicide (Washington vs. Glucksberg(5)). Permitting contracts that allow healthy parties to risk their lives for no other reason than that they"re pissed off does not pass the Rational Basis Test. Consider the classic scenario as shown in "Shindig" (Firefly, 2002 (6)), where an aristocrat hurls verbal abuse at a humble freighter captain until the captain provokes a duel, only to discover the nobleman is a veteran of dozens of duel victories. This entrapment would be trivially easy to engineer, and society would be the worse off for its allowance. == Public Benefit Argument " Imposes Externalities == Externalities are central to many laws because they attempt to systematize the costs to 3rd parties from actions that might otherwise be mutually agreeable to the 1st and 2nd parties. To make this argument, I need only refer to the note by Alexander Hamilton, penned on the eve of the duel with Aaron Burr which took his life (quoted from Wikipedia (7)): "Hamilton viewed his roles of being a father and husband, putting his creditors at risk, placing his family's welfare in jeopardy and his moral and religious stances as reasons not to duel, but he felt it impossible to avoid due to having made attacks on Burr which he was unable to recant, and because of Burr's behavior prior to the duel. He attempted to reconcile his moral and religious reasons and the codes of honor and politics. He intended to accept the duel and throw his fire in order to satisfy his morals and political codes, respectively. His desire to be available for future political matters also played a factor." (7) By sacrificing his life on the altar of his own morals and politics, he imposed all these externalities on his family, his creditors, and the society in the form of depriving them of a seasoned politician only barely past his prime. As the law should have no interest in Hamilton"s own sense of morals, that provides insufficient justification to allow him to jeopardize all these third parties with whom he has already contractually and emotionally obligated himself to exist. He caused a material drop in quality of life for all of them by dying foolishly at the hands of an enraged enemy; the same could be said of Aaron Burr, had he lost. The same could be said for anyone who has any sort of stakes with other people at all; one would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn"t. == Initial Conclusion == Liberty is important. The state"s interest must weigh liberty carefully when deciding to take it away. The Rational Basis Test shows at least these three legitimate reasons for disallowing duels, just as we disallow assisted suicide, lethal drug use, driving while drunk, and a host of other risky behaviors. When all three and their risks and probabilities are weighed against the liberty to engage in duels, even considering the Libertarian NAP, the balance in my view rests with maintaining the illegality of dueling. (1)http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com... (2)http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com... (3)http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu... (4)http://www2.dickinson.edu... (5)https://www.qu.edu...(2008-2009).pdf (6)https://en.wikipedia.org...(Firefly) (7)Freeman, Joanne B. (April 1996). "Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr"Hamilton Duel". https://www.jstor.org...