Here the position is very different. Take litigation for example. Sometimes the decision to begin either a civil claim or a criminal prosecution is a moral one, rather than a legal one. For example, Legal Aid can sometimes raise a moral decision. Legal Aid was, and is, an imaginative way in which deserving litigants can bring an action, which they could not otherwise afford; because legal costs are frighteningly big, and no-one can guarantee to win. The trouble is that if the claim fails, the plaintiff is indemnified as to costs by the legal aid fund, but the defendant seldom gets his costs, because the regulations make it unusual for an order for costs to be made against the plaintiff, and if it is made only for a modest sum, and quite exceptional for costs to be awarded against the legal aid fund. So successful defendants tend to think of legal aid as licensed blackmail. If a plaintiff, who has a legal aid certificate, simply has no case, one has a duty to report the matter back to the legal aid committee. Where it is borderline, the decision is much more difficult. So it is that you can be faced with a decision that is moral rather than legal.
You start to read the papers; and the rule that you must make yourself…