TY - JOUR AU - Melman, Charlie PY - 2018/04/19 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - If “Everyone Does It,” Then You Can Too JF - Stance: an international undergraduate philosophy journal JA - stance VL - 9 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.33043/S.9..27-31 UR - https://openjournals.bsu.edu/stance/article/view/18 SP - 27-31 AB - <p>I argue that the “But Everyone Does That” (BEDT) defense can have significant exculpatory force in a legal sense, but not a moral sense. I consider whether legal realism is a better theory of the law than the more orthodox view of respecting the law as it is written. I next examine what the purpose of the law is, especially attending to how widespread disobedience is treated. Finally, I attempt to fit BEDT within Paul Robinson’s framework for categorizing defenses. I conclude that, first, BEDT can have significant exculpatory force; second, a BEDT plea does not comport with either Robinson’s definition of an excuse or other commonly held conceptions and so needs its own classification; and finally, BEDT does not exonerate the offender in a moral sense—only in a legal context.</p> ER -