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Bystander Legislation: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, Amos N. Guiora, Jessie E. Dyer

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In this article we address the bystander with a particular focus on legislating-criminalizing the bystander. In doing so we focus on bystander responsibility from the perspective of the individual in peril. Why and how the individual is in that condition is irrelevant to the recommendation that a duty to act be imposed on the bystander. The circumstances that directly, or indirectly, led to the distress are insignificant to the legal obligation to intervene on behalf of the person in immediate physical peril.

The bystander is the person who observes another individual in distress, knows of that person’s travail, and has …