ABSTRACT
Without justice, society degenerates into a disharmonious mess that philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all, making life nasty, brutish, and short.”
Almost every TV viewer knew early on how the victims of the World Trade Center attack died; their causes of death are obviously bluntforce injuries, thermal injuries, or some combination. Even the manners of their deaths pose no great mystery-obvious homicides. Even if heart attacks took some, they must have been induced by the attack. So, why do we bother trying to recover, identify, and document each individual’s death through seemingly unending 12-hour shifts at such mass disasters as the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center? The answer points to our society’s moral foundation reflected through our system of law, and remains independent of our actual success or failure in the specific endeavor. We value human life as a matter of social order and, thereby, attach great
significance to human death. Many questions must be asked and answered, not only for relatives and friends of the dead, but for the greater social good as well.
