A closely related point:
The “principle of competing harms” amounts to something else called an “affirmative defense”: the acknowledgement in court that you did something you were not allowed by law to do, but it is nonetheless excuseable because of some other overriding legal/moral principle. This approach may very well work (ex.: in a self-defense case, “he was gonna kill me!” overrides “no discharge of firearms in city limits” and homicide prohibitions), but the catch is that you ARE ADMITTING GUILT in the hope that the court will, in fact, agree that such an otherwise illegal action was justified given the legal/practical circumstances. This usually only works in a _specific_ _articulable_ case (think Bernard Goetz being charged for unlicensed CCW), rarely applying to vague/hypothetical what-ifs. Again, do the right thing - and you’d darned well better be right.
If “the guy from Kansas” is smart and has a competent lawyer, he’ll admit what he did - and then make it convincingly clear that specific lives would be lost if he didn’t. He could conceivably win this. He could also conceivably turn this into overturning Rv.W, by arguing that there was nothing “private” about what was going on at a publicly advertised business operated by a very vocal & notorious practitioner.
Okay, I want you as my lawyer. This is finally rationality, logic, common sense, wise counsel, even a biblcial morality brought together.
Please weigh in on these sensitive issues more often and ping me when you do. Thanks.
ooooh, I like it