Who Determines What Is Moral and Immoral and What Is Legal and Illegal

The enforcement aspect of the above is different from morality. Parliament must take into account the reality of the application of the law when it adopts the law. The well-known problems that arose during prohibition made this clear. Morality has no such concern – something is wrong, whether we can get people to abstain from it or not. Legally, it is also necessary to take into account that when prosecuting offenders, evidence must be presented to the court in order to prove the crime. Ethicists often discuss what is right and wrong, but don`t spend much time worrying about how to prove that someone has done something wrong. A very obvious difference between morality and law is that the law has a whole apparatus of courts and law enforcement agencies that lacks morality, except in a few rare cases where religious courts deal with the interpretation and application of morality. But these seem to be more moral rules, which are at the same time legal rules. When theologians imagine that without a moral system derived from theology, people would have no reference point to anchor their ethics, they forget the following factors that most people have in common: It is believed that morality has existed since the beginning of the human species. However, it is widely accepted that religion has cemented morality as an essential social construct.

Thanks to common religions, it became common for people to adhere to norms of behavior that had serious consequences. Thus, religion and morality have been passed down from generation to generation and place, and although they have been different for different people, morality has become a central element of society. Imagine taking a walk in your city one evening. You arrive at an intersection with a traffic light. The pedestrian light says stop, but the whole street is empty. You wait and wait before finally deciding to cross the road. There are no cars coming, and you keep walking. Technically, what you did was illegal. But if you asked the average person if what you did was immoral, they would probably say no.

For example, you have to obey a law that says, «Don`t kill,» because murder is wrong in the first place; Making it a law does not make it particularly morally reprehensible. Although this first hypothesis – the need for a legislator – does not solve the problem it was supposed to solve, the second hypothesis – that the source of moral values must be outside of man – actually prevents us from finding the answer. The second hypothesis is based on the superficial awareness that laws seem to be imposed on us from outside. And it follows that there must be an external imposition of morality. But what is so often forgotten is that these human laws that seem to be imposed from the outside are, at least in the Western world, in fact the product of a democratic process. These are the laws of the governed. And if it is possible for people to make laws and impose those laws on themselves, then it is possible to do the same with morality. As in law, so in morality; The governed are capable of governing. Morality usually involves principles and rules about how a person should and should not behave.

Morality can be approached descriptively, as a social scientist might do when discussing the views of a particular culture (descriptive ethics), or normatively, as a religious believer, when arguing that certain moral rules are the right ones (normative ethics). Or you can deal with metaethics as an ethicist and ask questions about the meaning and justification of moral language and claims. On the other hand, the relationship between morality and law could be examined by adopting a normative approach instead of the descriptive approach used above. Let us suppose that, since social institutions are different, would the ideal and most correct system of morality coincide with or continue the ideal and most correct legal system? Are they essentially the same, except that one (the law) has «teeth» in the sense of the power to punish for non-compliance? Or are they two very different things, morality, which is based on ultimate reality itself, but the law is just human conventions or the sometimes seemingly arbitrary decisions of politicians? So trying to avoid taxes may not be moral, but there are many legal ways to get away with it – so it`s legal, but immoral. Our own history offers the best and saddest example. Before the Civil War, slavery was legal in the United States, but certainly not moral. The first legal code, the Codex of your-Nammu, was developed in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC. J.-C. The Code lists prohibited acts and the penalties associated with them.

The law had the support of the powers that be and was enforced throughout the empire. The Ur-Nammu codex was remarkably modern with a mixture of physical and monetary punishments. Current laws are still based on the structure of the your-Nammu Code. Above, we have pointed out the apparent differences between morality and law, but we should not exaggerate the importance of apparent differences on a descriptive level. Morality and law have much in common – they seem to be intimately linked in some respects. There are many, many morally impermissible acts that are also illegal (e.g., murder, rape, robbery, etc.), and many thinkers argue that the moral inadmissibility of such behavior leads judicial bodies to make such acts illegal. Is it a coincidence that we consider murder immoral and also make it illegal? Why should so many illegal acts be considered immoral if the true foundation of the law is different from morality? Some people actually think of the law as an «institutionalized morality.» But if such an anthropomorphic vision is an outgrowth of human self-esteem, it is also evidence of a certain lack of imagination. Why must the only source of higher morality be a superhuman being? Why not something completely unusual and incredibly superior? But what`s more alarming than a politician bending the rules is the ease with which his supporters often invoke, «Well, it`s not illegal.» Let`s go back to the schoolyard for some helpful reminders of our social norms. We are alarmed by bullying, and not only do we tell children not to bully, but we also reprimand children who turn a blind eye to bullying. We tell our children to raise their voices, stand up for the weak, etc.

Similarly, whistleblowing is promoted by many national organizations, universities and even the federal government. Rules and laws exist to protect and promote the functioning of communities. But therein lies one of the many eternal problems of the chicken or the egg: which came first, conformity or ethics? We might be inclined to think that laws stem from moral beliefs about what is right and wrong. But there are many interesting examples that challenge the perception that laws emanate from morality. But beyond that, I think as doctors and ethicists, we still have a lot of work to do to look in more detail at how we should balance legal structures in our work. Do we even have a moral obligation to obey the law? If so, how big is a moral obligation? How bad does a law have to be before we can justly recommend disobedience? For example, if the law says that you must hand over undocumented migrants to the authorities, then you would have a moral obligation to do so because it is the law.