Yes, Ethics Still Matter in an Emergency

My recent column about the legal status of people who took food from abandoned supermarkets after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas generated considerable and passionate disagreement. Now that Hurricane Irma is devastating large parts of the Caribbean and churning toward Florida, the same issues are likely to arise. So it’s worth taking some time to separate the legal questions that were the subject of my earlier column from the ethical questions I ignored.

The Harvey column began as a contribution to the online debate over whether hurricane victims looking for food should be called “looters.” I pointed out that under the “necessity” defense in criminal law, a person who needs food to sustain his family’s life is not guilty of a crime if he (nonviolently) takes food from an unattended store. This point is not new, and should not be controversial. I also noted that the Model Penal Code includes as an example of this defense a hiker who shelters in an empty cabin during a snowstorm and eats the food. This example, I argued, is essentially what some storm victims in cities do in an emergency.