Source: Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning

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In this fifth set of video lectures from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Harvard University professor Michael Sandel asks students to consider issues of free-market exchange. In the first lecture, he discusses how during the Civil War, draftees were allowed to pay hired substitutes to fight in their place; was this free-market exchange or coercion? A debate about contemporary questions surrounding military conscription follows. Is today's voluntary army really voluntary, given that many recruits come from a disproportionately lower economic background? In the second lecture, he applies the issue of free-market exchange to the topic of reproductive rights. He presents examples of the modern-day "business" of sperm and egg donation, including the famous legal case of "Baby M." Students discuss the morality of selling human life along with the surrounding legal issues.