R v Dudley and Stephens
Read this description of the famous Queen v. Dudley and Stephens case. As you read, consider whether you agree with the ruling in this case, and if you would rule differently, as well as why you would do so. This text discusses the famous lifeboat case, which established the legality of choosing to murder out of necessity. Although the details of the case are quite graphic, this fact itself may serve as a prompt for many of us to revise our initial intuitions about the moral status of killing one to save many others.
Cultural impact
The case is one of a few criminal cases taught to all law students in England and Wales and in many, though not all, former British territories and has long been so. After 1901 the pair faded in public discussion behind other, more culpable, criminals of previous decades.
The crew's ordeal inspired a key Monty Python sketch: "Lifeboat (Cannibalism)/Still no Sign of Land". Five sailors are on a lifeboat after a shipwreck. Their means to survive is cannibalism. Once they decide whom to eat – and which body parts – a waitress is called over to take their orders, complete with vegetables. In Monty Python's Flying Circus, this is followed by the controversial "Undertakers sketch", which also features cannibalism.
Yann Martel in Life of Pi (2001) named shipwrecked Bengal tiger Richard Parker.
In 2004, The Avett Brothers named their album Mignonette after the involved yacht.
In 2017, Canadian author Peter Staadecker published The Twelve Man Bilbo Choir, a novel inspired in part by the Mignonette incident.
The Case of the Speluncean Explorers is a famous hypothetical case created in 1949 by legal theorist Lon L. Fuller to illustrate divergent theories of law and morality in the context of facts heavily based around those of the crew.