An instrumental defense of a right to do wrong is plausible because we cannot directly intervene in an individual's choices so as to effectively promote that individual's moral good, if her moral good is conceived as being some form of individual autonomy. An epistemic defense is also plausible if we reorient J.S. Mill's epistemological argument for his Harm Principle in "On Liberty" to center on the agent's knowledge, rather than on the interfering observer's knowledge. Restrictions on harmless acts that are imposed because the acts are wrong are only justifiable to that individual if she herself knows that her acts are wrong. Both approaches depend upon the limited subjectivity and fallibility of the agent or interfering observer. Moreover, both approaches make the justification for a right to knowingly do wrong problematic.

The normative political theory problem of dirty hands (DH) concerns the troubling possibility that political leaders, from a (mostly) consequentialist perspective, might sometimes be morally required to make exceptions from sensitive rules like prohibitions of extremely harmful practices (e.g. torture) in order to avert catastrophic threats and crises, while such rules are still considered so important and such crises so rare that one nonetheless feels inclined to deem dirty exceptions categorically wrong so as to prevent their unnecessary proliferation through a slippery-slope type development.  How can we conceptualize such a problematic necessity? A latent but insufficiently explored idea in the DH literature is that the normatively preferrable approach to such a wicked problem might be to not try to conceptualize it at all, or at least not in our public work as academics. In this thesis, I introduce the straightforward suggestion that if the DH problem cannot be discussed without risking slippery-slope demoralization of the partaking deliberators and/or audience, we seem to be morally required to content ourselves with terming it an unspeakable, taboo subject in non-crisis times, as a meta-level ersatz solution to the core-level political problem conventionally centered in the DH literature.  I also discuss to what extent the mainstream, weak rule utilitarian (WRU) DH literature can themselves be understood as intentionally testing the limits of consequentialist reasoning in a search for a 'higher' moral truth than what their ethical position might entail at first glance.