Politicians sometimes have to make decisions where there is no option that looks good, morally speaking. They may have to get their hands dirty, acting in a way that looks immoral - sometimes powerfully so - in order to avoid some greater evil. This is called the problem of dirty hands, and it's long been of interest to philosophers. However, most of the philosophical work about dirty hands has focused on the person whose hands are dirty: have they acted wrongly, are they blameworthy, how should we respond to them? Christina Nick, a philosopher based at the IDEA Centre, is more interested in the victims of dirty-handed politicians. These victims may have been subjected to quite profound harms as a result of the actions of politicians who were trying to avoid some even worse harm. What does it look like to treat these victims justly? Specifically, are they owed reparations? And if so, what form should these reparations take, and should these reparations be made by, or on behalf of, the politicians who made the decision?

Christina Nick is a Lecturer in Applied Ethics atthe IDEA Centre at the University of Leeds. Her PhD thesis “The Problem of Democratic Dirty Hands” examined how we should understand the occurence of moral conflict for public office holders and how we ought to ascribe moral responsibility for the outcomes of such actions in modern democracies.

Here's an article about the Claudy bombing on the BBC website:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-62332152

...and the Police Ombudsman's report into the bombing:

https://www.policeombudsman.org/Investigation-Reports/Historical-Reports/Police-Ombudsman-s-Claudy-report

Here's an introduction to the philosophical problem of dirty hands in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dirty-hands/

Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Twitter: @EthicsUntangled
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/