The Case of the Speluncean Explorers
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Case of the Speluncean Explorers is a famous hypothetical legal case used in the study of law, which was written by Lon Fuller in 1949 for the Harvard Law Review.
In the hypothetical case, a trapped team of five spelunkers determine via radio contact with physicians that they will have starved to death by the time they are rescued, and thus elect to eat one of their party. Once the remaining four spelunkers are rescued, they are all indicted for the murder of their fifth member. The article proceeds to examine the case from the perspectives of five different legal principles, with widely varying conclusions as to whether or not the spelunkers are guilty, and whether or not they should be executed (as is the mandatory punishment for murder in the fictitious commonwealth where the case takes place).
See also
- R v Dudley and Stephens, an actual English criminal case from 1884 involving cannibalism at sea
