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Articles

In Defense Of Dueling

Ryan Ruby intellectually attacks, feints and parries in favour of legally reinstating the duel as a means of settling personal disputes.

While dueling is one of the oldest activities in the books (as readers of the Iliad will remember), laws against it are some of the oldest on them. In Europe, dueling was officially discouraged by the Catholic Church as well as by King James I of England. In America, both Washington and Franklin disapproved of the practice; Washington for tactical reasons – he didn’t want to diminish his officer corps – and Franklin, who described it as “uselessly violent,” for moral ones. Prohibitions against dueling made their way into a number of state constitutions, for instance those of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida, as well as into the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Article 114). But only slight penalties accrued to participating in duels – usually disenfranchisement, debarring, disqualification from office-holding or some other loss of social status or privilege.

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