Is life "priceless"?

Sandy Levinson

In a recent article in the Washington Post about whether the U.S. should pay ransom, in the context of the savage killing of James Foley, Adam Taylor writes, "It wasn't about figures. $100 million is a lot of money, but a life is priceless."  I must say that my first thought when I read this was that the central lesson of my first-year torts course at Stanford almost 45 years ago--which I consider the best course I've ever had, on any subject, anywhere (taught by Marc Franklin)--brought home the point that this statement is simply and utterly wrong.  The legal system prices human lives all the time; that is, among other things, what insurance policies are about, and, of course, the essence of tort law is to monetize the costs of what from a social perspective are completely foreseeable accidents.  We know, when we decide to build skyscrapers or major bridges, etc., that people are going to die.  Ditto, incidentally, with regard to raising speed limits on automobiles or continuing to allow the sale of alcohol in bars, etc., etc.  To be sure, we don't know exactly who is going to die, and that makes all the difference, just as Barack Obama doesn't know exactly whom he is sentencing to death when deploying troops or allowing the use of drones that will generate "collateral damage."  For many, that non-specificity makes all the difference.  Once we are presented with the picture of Mr. Foley, whose life could have been saved by the payment of a ransom, he becomes the "child in the well," where society spends an excess of funds to rescue the tot instead of spending the same money more wisely to save many more "statistical lives' unattached to particular faces.  And, of course, the difference between Mr. Foley and the child in the well is that we don't believe that rescuing the child will in fact create incentives for further children to fall down wells, whereas payment of ransom to thugs in fact does generate extremely bad incentives.  There is absolutely no excuse for what was done to Mr. Foley, but perhaps we have to treat war journalilsts the way we treat soldiers:  i.e., they voluntarily enlisted in a very dangerous occupation, for a mixture of reasons, including patriotism and devotion to the public weal, but part of the deal is that their lives will be on the line, to be protected only at "acceptable" cost.

Even if it is true that most of us consider our own lives "priceless," no society has ever operated on that basis, and none ever will.  
Posted 12:33 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]