How much punishment does a bad samaritan deserve?

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 93-116

  Davis, Michael ^a  

^a ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26444619454     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/bf00144129     Document Type: Article

References (3)

1. Note that the question of legal punishment for bad samaritanism is distinct from the question of the moral wrongness of bad samaritanism, law or no law. So, for example, just because much of the moral criticism of bad samaritanism turns on denial of the distinction between acts and omissions, it does not follow that a bad samaritan statute must be justified in that way. The law seems properly to require many positive acts that morality does not, for example, payment of sales tax or service on a jury. It is important in what follows not unthinkingly to turn questions of what the law should be into questions of what morality is.
2. Susan J. Hoffman, "Statutes Establish a Duty to Report Crimes or Render Assistance to Strangers: Making Apathy Criminal," Kentucky Law Journal 72 (1983-83): 827-65, at 839 and 858.
3. New York did, however, have a statute requiring citizens to notify authorities of a death. Gansberg, "Thirty-seven [sic] Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police," p. 38.