Abstract
This dissertation seeks to understand whether the language used in the dismissal of a South African whistleblower suggests that moral intuitions, as conceived of by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), influenced the adjudicator’s decision-making. It will consider the Protected Disclosures Act, 2000 and general labour law, as well as legal theory on the standard of ‘good faith’ to test the assertion that the dismissal was wrong in law. It will show that the claims of MFT, when applied to adjudication, echo the claims of American legal realism. This is that hard case adjudication is essentially subjective. It will set out MFT’s conception of moral thought as arising from mental structures bequeathed to humans by evolution. It will suggest that these same mental structures swiftly and unconsciously dispose of moral questions that arise in certain types of litigation, with adjudicators providing legally acceptable, ex post facto justifications afterwards. Theory aside, this dissertation will fashion a method and borrow tools from discourse analysis and literary theory to test for the distorting effect of moral intuition on the legal decision to dismiss the whistleblower. It will provide an intensive analysis and coding of the specific dismissal ruling with these tools. It concludes with remarks on how advocacy of whistleblowers may be improved using MFT’s conceptual framework. Keywords: whistleblower, law, good faith, moral intuition, Moral Foundations Theory, discourse analysis.
M.A. (Sociology)