To read Herman Melville's Billy Budd is to experience feelings of intense agony and helpless injustice. Billy Budd, a “handsome sailor,” adored by his shipmates for his intrinsic goodness, is sentenced to death by a seemingly formalistic and uncaring legal system (279). Wrongly accused of mutiny, Billy punches Claggart, incriminating him, and his single blow kills. As the ship's only witness and captain, Edward Vere must determine Billy's fate. Privately sympathizing with Billy's innocence, Vere publicly chooses naval duty over the morality of the heart, sentencing the young sailor to death in accordance with the "Articles of War." Vere's painful dilemma reflects the invariable frictions resulting from the natural man living in a society governed by man-made laws. The controversial decision to hang Billy “leaves us with the strong sense that the formal requirements of the legal system inevitably exclude certain important aspects of human existence” (Thomas 53). The legal system's failure to account for the natural law that motivates Billy's hit and his innocent intentions causes many readers to question the fairness of Vere's verdict and the inherent flaws in the justice system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayIn Billy Budd, man-made law is not simply the "general sense of order as opposed to chaos”, but rather codes which must judge Billy’s coup (Reich 128). Because the crime carries multiple implications, Billy's trial tests the ability of man-made laws to treat man as an imperfect creature. Billy's tragic execution reveals that man-made laws (society's legal codes) often punish actions motivated by natural laws or the instinctive laws of humans. When the envious officer of the British warship Bellipotent, John Claggart, falsely and maliciously accuses the innocent chief mate of attempted mutiny, Billy delivers a fatal blow "right to Claggart's forehead", in law-driven self-defense. natural (331). Billy's intention to protest this false incrimination is justified under natural law. Although disagreement remains, natural law is generally defined as a "system of good conduct or justice...common to all humans and derived from nature rather than the rules of society" ("Natural"). Proposed by the philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the fundamental postulates of the theory states that natural law tolerates the actions of man when he "behaves in a manner consistent with his rational nature", preserving one's own good or by satisfying "the inclinations which justify it". nature has taught it to all animals" ("Natural"). Although determining man's "true nature" is a tricky concept, most natural law theorists believe that killing to preserve one's own life, or by any other rational excuse, trumps society's divine and man-made commandments: "Thou shalt not kill" (McElroy 110). by Billy, as he himself explains during his testimony before the drum court: If I had used my tongue, I would not have hit him But he grossly lied to my face and in the presence of. my captain, and I had to say something and I could only say it in one go, God help me!” (338) Known to have slurred speech when agitated, Billy stood up "like someone impaled and gagged" and could only "gesture and gurgle"(331) Obviously, in a "convulsed mute", the only natural instinct of the master before is to act (331). The defense of “preserving one’s own property” would be consistent with natural law, including its fatal blow. Captain Vere now faces a terrible choice: follow the naval codes (man-made laws) or follow his conscience, siding with intuitive natural law. The British Articles of War XXII of the period states: "if anyone... in the fleet strikes one of its superior officers... [he] shall suffer death" (333). makes laws, because they are rules imposed by society requiring or prohibiting certain actions ("Law"). However, these articles are unique in that they provide for mandatory death sentences. While discretionary sanctions allow courts to decide the severity of punishment based on mitigating factors and the circumstances of the crime, mandatory death sentences limit courts to consider only the "overt act" and its consequences. If convicted of the crime, the perpetrator should be sentenced to death, regardless of his motives or compelling circumstances. Theoretically, summarily executing a life for murdering another life may seem fair (or at least numerically balanced), but Melville pokes holes in the arguments for the mandatory death penalty when he creates sympathy in readers for Billy and subsequently in his innocent intentions. Melville depicts Billy as embodying the “purity” of “Adam before the fall,” with a “restful good nature” that makes even the most temperamental sailors smile (286, 287). It is obvious to the shipmates as well as Captain Vere that Billy is “incapable of malice” (361). Obviously, Billy did not intend to murder Claggart, but only to defend himself against a life-threatening charge, an intention consistent with natural law. In convening a court to try Billy, Vere insists on disregarding Billy's intentions toward his officers, whose surprised and saddened response further highlights the artificiality of Vere's reasoning in favor of man-made laws when it is a question of suppressing the conscience of the heart, intrinsically instructed in natural law. Captain Vere and his officers are clearly torn between “military duty and moral scruple…driven by compassion.” Betraying "repressed emotion" in his voice, Vere reassures Billy that he knew the young sailor intended neither mutiny nor murder (337). Yet, in an immediate reversal during the drumhead trial, the captain decides that his court must "confine its attention to the consequences of the blow" because, according to the articles, "the intention or non-intention of Budd n 'has nothing to do with the goal' (339, 343). Forcibly demanding that the reluctant officers consent to Billy's execution, Vere assures them that he too feels a "troubled hesitation", but reminds them that "but in natural justice only the overt act of the prisoner must be taken into account” (341). In other words, Vere fully understands that if natural law had taken Billy's intentions into account, it would have declared him innocent. Yet, because he is captain of a British warship, Vere has no choice but to reason: “Is our allegiance [to] Nature? No, to the king. Although the ocean, which is an inviolate and primitive nature, although it is the element in which we move and have our being as sailors, yet our duty is to be the officers of the king..." (342) His later statement about the incongruous natures of the ocean's law and the king's law almost suggests a complaint in the face of.the incompatibility of man-made laws that govern human actions. British civilization is too far and different from the sphere of the ocean, perhaps symbolizing the natural laws of the human heart. such a civilization seems insufficient and inadequate to solve the problems encountered on the primeval ocean on which the story of Billy Budd and human nature takes place. Criticism of Billy's execution should therefore not be directed entirely at Vere, but rather at the foolish, man-made man. Items. When an execution provokes anguish and sadness among both the judges and the public (the sailors of Bellipotent whose murmurs reveal a “sullen dismissal”), all this should be a sign of a flaw in the legal mandate (356). a British intellectual movement denounced the Articles of War as "unyielding brutality and cruelty [of the mandatory death penalty] codified in law" (Franklin, NA). Their protest signified man's desire for man-made laws to encompass more natural laws. Similarly, when the United States established its own "articles of war" modeled on Britain, an American mandatory anti-capital punishment law sparked debate across the country from 1830 to 1895 (Franklin, N / A). Written in 1886 in New York, Billy Budd coincided with the crucial years when the majority of state criminal laws gradually shifted from mandatory to discretionary capital punishment, while military law refused to follow suit and still maintains today the death penalty is mandatory for wartime espionage ("Men", 1032). Although Melville's general intention in writing Billy Budd may have been much broader, his description of Billy's tragic death in the name of an insensitive legal mandate seems to express a broad refutation of laws that disregard mentality and of the prisoner's circumstances. , in principle only applies to special laws prescribing capital punishment, in practice it also aptly describes criminal law, both in Britain and the United States, countries with similar criminal laws. While courts martial under laws such as the Articles of War are not legally required to consider factors mitigating the seriousness of the crime, criminal courts in both countries are legally required to consider the state of mind of the accused during the crime and to adjust the punishment accordingly ("Men", 1028). The legal term "mens reas" refers to a "guilty mind", while in theory a crime is only defined when the perpetrator commits it with a "guilty mind" or premeditated guilty intentions. Therefore, “a harmful action committed by one who honestly ignores its harmful character should not be condemned and punished” (“Mens,” 1028). In this regard, British and American law have already made significant strides in incorporating natural law into man-made law. However, in practice, it appears that mens rea, since its establishment in the 17th century, has been “above all an explanatory construct, and not a functional rule of law” (“Mens,” 1029). A recent survey in 1970 revealed seventy-six different ways of expressing mens reas in American criminal law statutes (“Mens,” 1030). The “consequence of this chaos is the administrative burden that legal uncertainty creates” because lawyers “engage in a bitter battle over questions of interpretation regarding mens rea” (“Mens,” 1030). At best, mens rea can only “differentiate between the seriousness of the crime,” which ultimately “may not matter,” and the sentence imposed for the crime.(“Mens,” 1029). Fundamentally similar to Billy's story, a historical case confirms the glaring disparity between justice based on natural law and justice based on man-made law, while highlighting the inconsistency of criminal law verdicts with the mens rea. In 1884, two years before Melville began Billy Budd, a shipwreck threw three sailors and a sixteen-year-old boy into the open sea in a lifeboat off the Cape of Good Hope. Having drifted for eighteen days, they had neither eaten nor drunk in the last five days and the young boy was on the verge of starvation. With no help in sight, two of the sailors, Dudley and Stephens, decided to murder the boy. Four days after eating the boy, the three sailors were rescued and returned to England, after which Dudley and Stephens were immediately sentenced to death (Reich 132). In delivering the verdict, English Chief Justice Lord Coleridge wrote that "we are often forced to set standards which we ourselves cannot achieve" (Reich 133). This statement implies that although certain crimes may be inherent in human nature, society does not tolerate them even though tolerance is legally required. Although Lord Coleridge acknowledged that all four would have died if they had not eaten the boy, he still refused to accept the "necessity" of survival as an excuse for murder. Yet the “necessity” to preserve one’s life is exactly what mens rea, based on natural law, condones. Just as mens rea would absolve the guilt of Claggart's unpremeditated murder, mens rea also accepts "necessity" as a valid exoneration of the perpetrator ("Mens", 1028). Yet, if Dudley and Stephens are not being tried on the basis of the "articles of war" but rather on the basis of discretionary criminal law, why does Lord Coleridge refuse to respect mens rea and absolve them of their crime? He defends the death penalty by saying that there is a:... Terrible danger of admitting the principle [of necessity]. Who should be the judge of this sort of necessity? By what measure should we measure the comparative value of lives? Once admitted, such a principle could become the legal cloak of unbridled passion and atrocious crime...there is no safe path for judges to follow..." (Reich 133) Due of the elusive "measure" of mens rea, Lord Coleridge's statement implies that mens rea (like natural law) would legally "tolerate" too much crime, leading to more crime and chaos He echoes the concerns. similar to other judges who have rendered verdicts inconsistent with mens rea directed against the insufficiency of mens rea, but one can transform his statement into a criticism of the insufficiency of the general law. and Billy seem to depend on the judges' acceptance that punishment in the name of law can sacrifice Billy's innocence, Dudley, and Stephens acted like "natural men", committing crimes when they were. “overwhelmed by forces beyond their control,” namely natural self-defense and the primitive urges of hunger (Reich 139). Yet all three are guilty of committing a legal crime, because. courts completely ignore natural law and mens rea. This clear standard for determining guilt and innocence seems inadequate to address the complexity of human nature. It seems that the human mind is too unknowable, with its multifaceted motivations, for present and past laws to be properly evaluated. As verdicts ignoring mens rea show, even when the laws of society theoretically take into account the complexity of man, this is difficult to implement in the.