Justice and the Dying

Abstract

Perhaps the primary question about justice and the dying is whether justice is the appropriate category for discussing most of the significant ethical issues concerning the dying. Many works concerned with the dying, even by non-utilitarians, emphasize considerations of benevolence rather than those of justice. The extent to which one believes justice is a major consideration depends on one’s concept of justice. The following discussion is framed around three concepts of justice. The first section considers justice as respecting rights, focusing on the alleged right to die and a right to be told the truth. The second section discusses distributive justice and its possible conflicts with efficiency in the allocation of scarce resources between the dying and others. In particular, is the fact that people are dying a reason for not allocating resources to them? Compensatory justice, whether the dying are entitled to benefits to compensate for their dying, is analyzed in the last section.