GERALD LANG FAIRNESS IN LIFE AND DEATH CASES ABSTRACT. John Taurek famously argued that, in ‘conflict cases’, where we are confronted with a smaller and a larger group of individuals, and can choose which group to save from harm, we should toss a coin, rather than saving the larger group. This is primarily because coin-tossing is fairer: it ensures that each individual, regardless of the group to which he or she belongs, has an equal chance of being saved. This article provides a new response to Taurek’s argument. It proposes that there are two possible types of unfairness that have to be avoided in conflict cases, as far as possible: ‘selection unfairness’, which is the unfairness of not giving individuals an equal chance of being saved; and ‘outcome unfairness’, which is the unfairness of not actually saving them, when others are saved. Since saving the greater number generates less outcome unfa-irness than coin-tossing, it is argued that, in many conflict cases, fairness demands that we save the greater number. In some life and death cases, we have a choice between saving one stranger or group of strangers, and saving another stranger, or group of strangers. We can choose which group of strangers to save, but we cannot save everyone. These are the cases I will be concerned with here. I will call them ‘conflict of lives cases’, or ‘conflict cases’ for short. In a famous and widely discussed article, ‘Should the Numbers Count?’, John Taurek argues that tossing an unbiased coin is the fair way of deciding what to do in conflict cases. 1 Taurek’s prescription is intended to hold both when the groups are equal in size, and when the groups are unequal in size. (I will return to this point shortly.) It should be immediately noted that, since coins have only two sides, coin-tossing can only handle conflict cases where there are precisely two individuals, or two groups of individuals, who need to be saved. I will typically focus on coin-tossing here, on the harmless assumption that we are considering cases in which only two groups of individuals are involved. Of course, some other random selection device must be used where there are more than two rescue groups to be considered, but Taurek’s argument can be comfortably adapted to cover these conflict cases. Erkenntnis (2005) 62: 321–351 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10670-004-4499-y