Let us consider this pair of cases:

In the first, Smith stands to gain a large inheritance if anything should happen to his six-year-old cousin. One evening while the child is taking his bath, Smith sneaks in­to the bathroom and drowns the child, and then arranges things so that it will look like an accident.

In the second, Jones also stands to gain if anything should happen to his six-year-old cousin. Like Smith, Jones sneaks in planning to drown the child in his bath. However, just as he enters the bathroom Jones sees the child slip and hit his head, and fall face down in the water. Jones is delighted; he stands by, ready to push the child’s head back under if it is necessary, but it is not necessary. With only a little thrashing about, the child drowns all by himself, ‘accidentally,’ as Jones watches and does nothing.

Now Smith killed the child, whereas Jones ‘merely’ let the child die. That is the only difference between them. Did either man behave better, from a moral point of view?

— James Rachels, “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” New England Journal of Medicine, January 1975

Imagine five survivors are on a lifeboat. Because of limits of size, the boat can only support four. All weigh approximately the same and would take up approximately the same amount of space. Four of the five are normal adult human beings. The fifth is a dog. One must be thrown overboard or else all will perish. Who should it be?

— Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 1983

“Almost all absurdity of conduct,” wrote Dr. Johnson, “arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”

When a bout of rheumatic fever in 1867 left the Princess of Wales with a limp, London society ladies began to copy her gait. This grew so popular that it became known as “the Alexandra limp.”

The affectation was widely derided — John Stephen Farmer called it “an erstwhile fit of semi-imbecility” by “a crowd of limping petticoated toadies” — but it was followed almost immediately by the “Grecian bend,” in which ladies began stooping forward from the waist. Albert Jones Bellows described a sighting in Boston:

She waddled a few rods past the store, and then turned round, smiling, or rather smirking, complacently on her ‘crowd of admirers,’ with an expression of face which seemed to say, … ‘All my torture is repaid by the admiration I excite.’ And I wanted to quote the apostrophe of Burns to the louse:–

‘O, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
And e’en devotion!’

Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim in an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?

— Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” from Utilitarianism: For and Against, 1973

Imagine yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the organs you transplant always take. At the moment, you have five patients who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart? The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the right blood-type and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor. All you need to do is cut him up and distribute his parts among the five who need them. You ask, but he says, ‘Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no.’ Would it be morally permissible for you to operate anyway?

— Judith Jarvis Thompson, “The Trolley Problem,” Yale Law Journal, 1985

A French gentleman made a will in which, among other bequests, he left handsome sums of money to his two nephews, Charles and Henri. The sums were equal in amount. When the testator died and the will came to be proved, the nephews expected to receive two hundred thousand francs each as their specific bequests. But the executors disputed this, and said that each legacy was for one hundred thousand francs.

The legatees pointed to the word deux.

‘No,’ said the executors, ‘there is a comma or apostrophe between the d and the e, making it d’eux.’

‘Not so,’ rejoined Charles and Henri; ‘that is only a little blot of ink, having nothing to do with the actual writing.’

Let us put the two interpretations in juxtaposition:

À chacun deux cent milles francs.
À chacun d’eux cent milles francs.

The first form means, ‘To each two hundred thousand francs,’ whereas the other has the very different meaning, ‘To each of them a hundred thousand francs.’ This little mark (‘) made all the difference.

The paper had been folded before the ink was dry. A few spots of ink had been transposed from one side of the fold to the other, and the question was whether the apparent or supposed apostrophe was one such spot.

The legatees had very strong reasons–two hundred thousand strong–for wishing that the little spot of ink should be proved merely a blot; but their opponents had equally strong reasons for wishing that the blot should be accepted as an apostrophe, an intended and component element in the writing.

The decision was in favor of the legatees, but was only reached after long and expensive litigation.

— William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

In 1870 the Duke of Wellington received a letter from Sir Charles Russell. He was restoring a certain church and had taken the liberty to put Wellington’s name down for a donation.

“Dear Sir Charles,” Wellington replied, “I too am restoring a church, and if we both agree to give the same amount, no money need pass between us. Yours, Wellington.”

In 2006, exasperated when the parties to Avista Management v. Wausau Underwriters could not agree on the site for a deposition, federal judge Gregory Presnell of the Middle District of Florida scheduled a unique resolution on the steps of a Tampa courthouse:

Each lawyer shall be entitled to be accompanied by one paralegal who shall act as an attendant and witness. At that time and location, counsel shall engage in one game of ‘rock, paper, scissors.’ The winner of this engagement shall be entitled to select the location for the 30(b)(6) deposition to be held somewhere in Hillsborough County during the period July 11–12, 2006.

In 1596, when legal scrivener Richard Mylward produced a legal pleading that was fully 120 pages long when 16 would have sufficed, Lord Keeper Egerton found a fitting punishment:

It is therefore ordered, that the warden of the Fleet shall take the said Richard Mylward into his custody, and shall bring him into Westminster Hall on Saturday next about 10 of the clock in the forenoon, and then and there shall cut a hole in the myddest of the same engrossed Replication, which is delivered unto him for that purpose, and put the said Richard’s head through the same hole, and so let the same Replication hang about his shoulders with the written side outward, and then, the same so hanging, shall lead the same Richard, bareheaded and barefaced, round about Westminster Hall whilst the Courts are sitting, and shall shew him at the bar of every of the three Courts within the Hall, and then shall take him back again to the Fleet, and keep him prisoner until he shall have paid £10 to her Majesty for a fine, and 20 nobles to the defendant for his costs in respect of the aforesaid abuse, which fine and costs are now adjudged and imposed upon him by this Court for the abuse aforesaid.

“If the laws could speak for themselves,” wrote Lord Halifax, “they would complain of the lawyers in the first place.”