View source for Special Pleading

{{Useful Notes}}
This is the [[Logical Fallacy]] of asking to be held as an exemption to a rule that others are held by. It's typically used as an excuse for special treatment others don't receive, or to win arguments by claiming to have special insights others don't have.

{{quote|"I'm a judge, so I shouldn't have to stop at red lights."}}

This is fallacious because even if someone has certain expertise or is part of a specific group, they still have to provide evidence and cogent reasons for their position.

A fairly well-known example is the common argument that the universe must logically have a creator. This goes:

{{quote|Everything that has a beginning has a cause
The universe has a beginning
Therefore the universe has a cause.}}

The special pleading here is that it's insisted that an ultimate cause exists; to avoid the infinite regress, it's claimed that this cause is the sole exception and does ''not'' require a beginning, and therefore does not itself require a cause.

{{examples}}
== Real Life ==
* There has been a longstanding belief that US laws do not apply to the US President ''because'' he is the President. The US Supreme Court has corrected that fallacy more than once, including in 1974 ([[Richard Nixon|Nixon]]), 1997 ([[Bill Clinton|Clinton]]), and 2020 ([[Donald Trump|Trump]]).


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[[Category:Logical Fallacies]]