The Case of the Speluncean Explorers

"The Case of the Speluncean Explorers" is an article by legal philosopher Lon L. Fuller first published in the Harvard Law Review in 1949. Largely taking the form of a fictional judgment, it presents a legal philosophy puzzle to the reader and five possible solutions in the form of judicial opinions that are attributed to judges sitting on the fictional "Supreme Court of Newgarth" in the year 4300.

The case involves five explorers who are caved in following a landslide. They learn via intermittent radio contact that, without food, they are likely to starve to death before they can be rescued. They decide that one of them should be killed and eaten, so that the others might survive. They determine who should be killed by throwing a pair of dice. After the four survivors are rescued, they are charged and found guilty of the murder of the fifth explorer. If their appeal to the Supreme Court of Newgarth fails, they face a mandatory death sentence. Although the wording of the statute is clear and unambiguous, there is intense public pressure to spare the men from the death penalty.

The article offers five possible court responses. Each differs in its reasoning and on whether the survivors should be found guilty of breaching the law. Two judges affirm the convictions, emphasizing the importance of the separation of powers and literal approach to statutory interpretation. Two others vote to overturn the convictions: one invokes "common sense" and the will of the people, while the other relies on arguments from the natural law tradition, such as impossibilium nulla obligatio est ("there is no obligation to do the impossible") and lex non cogit ad impossibilia ("the law does not compel the doing of impossibilities"), stressing a purposive approach to the application of law. A fifth judge, who is unable to reach a conclusion, recuses himself. As the court's decision is a tie, the original convictions are upheld and the men are sentenced to death.

Fuller's account has been described as "a classic in jurisprudence" and "a microcosm of [the 20th] century's debates" in legal philosophy. It allows for contrasts to be drawn between different legal philosophies, with the main two being natural law and legal positivism. In the 50 years following the article's publication, a further 25 hypothetical judgments were written by various authors whose perspectives include natural law theory, consequentialism, plain meaning positivism or textualism, purposivism, historical contextualism, realism, pragmatism, critical legal studies, feminism, process theory and minimalism.