I’m good at not offending people, and I’m a damn good fencer.
I’m fine with said arrangement.
*A glove slap in a little old face will
Get you satisfaction.
Glove slap ba-a-beee …
(Glove slap, baby)
Glove slap, baby, glove slap!
Glove slap, I don’t take crap!
Glove slap, shut your big yap.
*
Exactly. Why should it matter? The only problem I might have is if the mentally ill are not on the list of people who cannot accept or offer a challenge, as I’d be worried about people challenging (or, worse, pissing people off until they challenge him) just so they can commit suicide.
Actually, I think it’s great. Count me in.
Depends…how’s the weather there?
-D/a
This. Wouldn’t affect me much.
If a hired champion is acceptable, there will be very few duels.
Boring middle-class schlubs like me will purchase duel insurance, and with our pooled funds, we’ll be able to hire highly competent swordsmen. A discreet insurance pin on one’s lapel should ward off most challenges.
No reason you can’t do both. Let the rich folks pay for your training and continual education, while helping out poor folks on the side.
Mayhap. It depends on how culturally acceptable it is to hire someone to fight on your behalf; I expect healthy men in the prime of their lives will be mocked and shunned for hiring champions.
I also expect that there must be some requirement that, if one’s champion loses a death duel, the client is also executed on the spot.
What’re you, an Etruscan or something? 
Hmph. I’ll have you know that both me and my soul-mated-through-time husband are re-incarnated Etruscans, and we both deeply resent the implication that our culture may be either cowardly or cheapskates. (We can’t quite figure out which way the insult runs, exactly, but that makes it no less insulting!)
As for dueling insurance, you’d have to be careful there, because some of the best duelists may not take your group insurance, because it doesn’t end up paying as well as the people who pay out of pocket individually. You don’t want to end up with a cut-rate duelist, now do you?
I think I’d have a lot of fun being a champion. If you’re a champion, can you choose to only take certain kinds of challenges? Like I would only duel someone at hand-to-hand not to the death, but I would duel pistols to the death. (Hand to hand to death can get so messy, really.)
What’s the deductable on dueling insurance anyway?
Sure, I’d do it. What the hell, I lived in West Dallas back in the 1950s; your place sounds safer than that.
Absolutely. I would enjoy the benefits of a politer society.
Cowardly. Etruscans didn’t have enough lucre to be cheapskates, on account of being snivelling wimps who jumped at their own shadows.
The champions are licensed but not government employees, so I’m sure they get to choose whom they will and will not represent. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the dueling commission forbade fisticuffs to the death, though I’m hard-pressed to think of a good reason why.
[red forman]
If you’re not mad enough to bare-knuckle box, you’re not really mad.
[/red forman]
no doper can, i think.
Haven’t had the chance to read the whole thread yet (about to go to bed when it caught my eye) but it reminded me of a fun short science-fiction story I read years ago.
The basic scenario is that lifelike and totally immersive virtual-reality has been invented and is readibly available (think The Matrix). In order to solve disputes dueling has come back into fashion and is facilitated by the virtual reality.
Anyone can challenge anyone else to a duel over an issue, its best of three rounds, the challenged person gets to chose the means in the first and third round and the challenger the second round, and the results are legally binding.
The fun part is that due to the face that its not real life the duel can involve any sort of combat imaginable, people are depicted dueling by means of swords, tanks, fighter jets, submarines all the way up to a global thermonuclear exchange!
Now in my opinion that would be a fun way to settle an argument, “You Sir are a cad and a scoundrel, I challenge you to a duel, Orbital Laser Cannons at dawn!” 
Interesting question. I think it depends on the culture: is there sufficient pressure to accept duels that it’s a real problem? Is it systematic of a culture sufficiently bloodthirsty it would be unpleasant or dangerous to live there?
You have something very similar in real life considering moving to a country where legal or extra-legal deaths are common. Would you move to a country where there’s a death penalty? Would you move to a country where the death penalty is endemic, even for crimes you don’t really agree with? Would you move to a country where there’s much sectarian violence? It would depend what would happen to you, and how much you wanted to avoid seeming to support the regime.
That’s pretty much what I was hoping the thread would be about.
I live in one.
I’d argue that none of those things is likely to be true of this hypothetical country; all the regulation surrounding dueling implies (to me) that death isn’t casual there.
I would have no overriding moral objection to living in such a country, but I would not personally participate at all. If challenged, I would not accept. I don’t mind people thinking me a coward, so long as I’m not one of them.
A point of order: You said that the professional duelists cannot issue challenges. Can they themselves be challenged? And if challenged, can they decline or hire a different professional, just like anyone else? I mean legally: Obviously nobody would ever hire a champion again who’s declined or delegated a fight.
And yes, I am thinking of Honor Harrington, here, though the situation isn’t exactly analogous.
Of course they can be challenged. I’m sure it would end badly for the challenger, though. As Robert B. Parker wrote in practically every Spenser novel, there’s a difference between amateurs and professionals.
I note that the setup doesn’t limit the duel to swords or pistols.
Therefore, if challenged to a duel, I could accept … on the condition that we duel with banjos!
EDIT: Though now that I think about it, a banjo duel to the death might take an awfully long time…