And although supererogation cannot be hoped to simply offset even one's own violations of duty, the merit of actions beyond the call of duty definitely plays an important role in the overall evaluation of one's moral record.
The "merit" of actions, he says in Book II of TMS, depends on their consequences, even if their propriety is independent of consequences; the point, for him, is just that these are two different elements of moral judgment and the first is of greater importance than the second (188).
These results are relevant to the debate over the merits of affirmative action in university admissions to the extent that affirmative action leads to inefficient sorting.
His opinions about the credibility of witnesses, the validity of legal theories, the culpability of the defendant, the choice of remedy, and so forth all dealt with the merits of the action.
"Whatever the merits of the action taken by the governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the FSA - and this committee has sympathy with the conclusion that they had drawn about the leadership of Barclays - the action they took has exposed implicit, and potentially arbitrary power, to force out senior figures in the financial services industry," the report said.
But despite its uniformity and placid appearance, the university, like South Korea itself, is locked in a roiling debate over the merits of affirmative action, which -- though it is based here on region rather than race or ethnicity -- is every bit as divisive as any culture war in multiethnic America.
Obama is faced with the challenge of persuading his doubtful countrymen and an intractable Congress of the merits of military action.
The mark of their content-independence is that their force does not depend on the nature or merits of the action they require: in most cases, law can impose an obligation to do X or to refrain from doing X (Hart 1958 1982254 55–55; but cf. Markwick 2000).
As Justice Sotomayor passionately argued in dissent, the real question in Schuette was not about whether Michigan voters should be allowed to debate the merits of affirmative action.
"It has also prompted speculation as to what role, if any, the Department of Justice... played in advising the President on the legal merits of this action".
