What Does It Mean to "Always Do What's Right Over What's Easy?"

I am called to elaborate on yesterday's post to drill down on the definition of what I mean when I say I attempt to "always do what is right over what is easy." This has been a personal motto of mine since 2009. One person suggested to me that people (including I myself) may believe we are doing the right thing, but may be confused, or may have blindspots (which the psychological literature suggests are common), and that even Donald Trump or Hitler may think or have thought they are or were doing the right thing. 

There are many ways to approach the question of what it means to "do right." Many wise scholars have heated debates within the field of ethics and I won't rehash them here, except to say at elite law schools I've been affiliated with an instructive moral dilemma is taught known as the "trolley problem," which was invented by a woman philosopher named Phillipa Foot.  (I mention her gender only because there were so few women in the academy when she derived this problem, and women in math or math-adjacent disciplines are rare and I could discourse at length about this, but that's not the topic of today's post).

The problem or hypo has a bystander who comes upon a train track with a lever placed in front of them. Currently, the trolley is barreling down the track and will kill or injure five people. If the bystander, however, pulls the lever the train will switch to another track, and only kill one person, avoiding the deaths of five other people. Most individuals when faced with the trolley problem opt to do nothing in a real world experiment, and not pull the lever because of the "doing/allowing" distinction, where they do not feel morally responsible for a death they don't actually cause. (How this experiment passed IRB approval is another question . . . no one was killed in this experiment, but it was extremely traumatic to participants). 

Many if not most law students resist this problem, and do what law professors dislike, and "fight the hypo." It's of course a valid argumentative technique if the hypo is oversimplified and problematic, and my personal take on the trolley problem sides with critiques that could be leveled at my own work on game theory - that it is ultimately oversimplified and reductionist and therefore not a realistic scenario. (Shout out to Jack Balkin if you ever read this, since moral dilemmas and game theory are often oversimplified, which is why I ultimately wish to learn sophisticated math modeling and the tools climate scientists use, though not to model the climate, but to study game theory.) 

Okay, so the trolley problem is oversimplified, yet it is also undeniable. As much as we (and by we I mean society) might wish to "fight the hypo," in reality there are real-life situations where the hypo cannot be fought and no amount of my game theory work (which seeks to rethink age-old dilemmas such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Chicken) could transform these scenarios in which there are binary answers, meaning a "1" or a "0" or a "yes" or a "no."  The trolley problem is a helpful tool or heuristic to show in reality individuals are sometimes faced with tough "either/or" binary choices that are ethical in nature. 

While I'm not a perfect person (and one might critique my decision to work at Yale Law School instead of fighting child slavery in Africa where my safety could not be guaranteed and where I would likely have had to give up two cats, a life fork I somewhat faced), in my life I've faced ethical dilemmas and elected to do what was or is hard and correct over what is or was easy. 

For example, I've been encouraged to cheat throughout my mathematics career and been tempted to do so. I actually failed a math class at Cornell University where I had a passing grade in the class prior to an exam where I was so sick that I was throwing up and could not get out of bed and chose to prioritize my health even though I could easily have used AI to look up the answers since it was a take home test, or called my mathematician uncle who coached me throughout the class and counseled me to cheat. Throughout this class, I was repeatedly counseled to cheat by my own tutor, and witnessed other students who seemed to be cheating, and I refused to do so. This is merely one of innumerable examples of me refusing to lie or cheat when it might have benefitted me, and where I've been repeatedly advised to lie or cheat. So I think it's fair to say that I've modeled ethical behavior and held myself to a high ethical standard.

Now, in a better world, this test situation would not have happened, and I would have been exempt from taking the exam due to illness, but I could not fiat my way out of the situation, and similarly there are real world moral dilemmas that people cannot fiat away. I do not pass judgment on individuals who have lied or cheated in unethical situations, such as a "ban the box" situation (where an individual may lie about their criminal record to get a job), though I myself have never done it, nor would I. I side strongly with the "ban the box" movement, and note that an amazing public defender and Harvard instructor who was at Yale with me might not have gotten his career started had he not originally lied when he first got out of jail after doing time for carjacking and now he's a famous public defender. 

(Okay fine, I've made a total of seven or eight knowing misstatements since 2020, none material, when I went through a spiritual awakening that coincided with the decision to pursue my job talk paper. The psychological literature suggests that this is highly uncommon and that most people lie multiple times a day and this is actually seen as socially beneficial because it can be considered rude or too direct to tell the truth. I disagree, and in my view speaking up is incredibly important and crucial to prevent bad accidents from occurring. There is a wealth of literature on the Challenger explosion and substantial research that suggests that NASA, an institution I worship, had a dysfunctional and toxic culture and engineers who originally attempted to prevent the Challenger from launching people pleased after they were leaned on by management because delaying the launch could have embarrassed NASA. . . in the end the engineers were right, management was wrong, and NASA was embarrassed even more all for failure to listen to the people actually doing the work.)

Returning to my point regarding moral dilemmas, I've sought to hold myself  to a high ethical standard, and that's perhaps because I had amazing role models like my Fourth Circuit Judge Roger L. Gregory. Judge Gregory is the most inspiring person I've ever personally met and he made and makes me want to be a better person. Similarly, I had a teacher in law school named Philip Frickey who inspired me so much I eagerly awoke to attend his 8 am classes even though at the time I was not a morning person. Judge Gregory nourished my faith, listened to me throughout everything, and has been there for me through good times and bad even though I clerked for him years ago, and has been a champion for me throughout my career.

Judge Gregory and Phil Frickey led by example not by being punitive but by being gentle cheerleaders. To today's youth - find a mentor who inspires you to emulate them and seek that person's guidance. I am nothing without the mentors whose shoulders I stand on, and I would not have turned into the person I am today without them, even though I also see and acknowledge the fact that no one, not even a person we may love or idealize, when put under a microscope turns out to be the person we might have thought them to be. I was once accused of seeing the world through "rose colored glasses" and while I love roses and they are my favorite flower, no one on the planet is perfect and even great spiritual leaders like MLK himself had profound flaws. 

The world is better off because MLK existed and I'm thankful for that, and I'm thankful that his reputation wasn't destroyed by secret surveillance tapes that he was threatened with before he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King despite being a historically complicated figure survived repeated attempts to bully him to give up his ideals, and the fact that he refused to give in under pressure is why he's one of my ultimate heroes. Leading by love and through example is ultimately a better teaching technique than punishment, though I myself am a work in progress. In a more loving world everyone is accepted even as we seek to hold them to high standards, not through punishment but through inspiration. That's the world I stand for, even if it doesn't exist yet.   

A concluding remark: In status quo, while I myself have always sought to hold myself to incredibly high ethical standards, not everyone can or should adhere to them because the world is rife with injustices, and I do not judge others for their respective choices. I would never judge a person who sought to steal food when they were hungry, even though I myself have gone hungry, and have never stolen food though I've been tempted to do so on multiple occasions. Not everyone has my privilege, and I would never judge a youth in a high crime area for their choice to commit crime to feed themselves, though I would encourage them to take a different path, and my scholarship stands for systematic reform efforts to eliminate situations such as these so no one ever has to make such a horrible choice. (I commend the work of Common Justice to interested readers for a take I support on how to better eliminate crime through structural reform to address the root causes of crime, such as unemployment.) 

A famous biblical quote instructs "judge not lest ye be judged" and while I take issue with aspects of the Bible (and most importantly the parable of Adam and Eve, which I'll return to in a later post where I discuss feminism and curiosity), ancient wisdom surrounding non-judgment and acceptance is terrific advice, and I stand for a less judgmental, and more compassionate world for all beings - humans, animals, and even plants and bugs and insects and even Donald Trump. That's what I stand for at the end of the day, and that's the world my math stands for. A UC Berkeley professor in law school once accused me of wanting the whole world to hold hands and sing kumbaya, and all I have to say is, what's so wrong with this? Why would anyone oppose this? It might put people out of jobs, but in the world I stand for, peace prevails and everyone can live to their potential. 

- Cortelyou C. Kenney