Discuss the Relationship between law and morals. Consider how far the law seeks to uphold and promote moral values.

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Laura Wing                Law Homework

Discuss the Relationship between law and morals. Consider how far the law seeks to uphold and promote moral values.                                         Total marks = 30.

The relationship between law and morality is not an easy one. Moral rules and legal rules have some similarities: like all rules, according to Hart, they share a general (though not necessarily universal) habit of obedience within the society to which they apply, and a “critical reflexive attitude” (a sense of “oughtness”). Moral rules and legal rules are certainly not the same: there are some legal rules that are not moral rules and vice versa. In some cases the moral view and the legal view overlap, this will be discussed later.

There are several differences between law and morality. Firstly, in general, the law applies to everyone in society whereas morals are more of a personal opinion and can apply to individual groups of people. For example, the practice of Christianity and other denominations holds many moral views and lessons such as ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ but this is not a law and does not bind society as a whole.

The law is laid down in statute and enforced by the judiciary and police whereas moral rules are difficult to find an absolute and are enforced through social pressure and supported by an appeal to respect them.

Another comparison between law and morality is that moral rules are not subject to deliberate creation or change. Moral views in religious groups have been created over thousands of years and overall they remain the same to this day. Moral views held by the majority of society however, change gradually over time; an example of this is drink driving. This makes it incredibly difficult to resolve disagreements to moral views. In contrast, legal rules can be changed by enactment and even the date of the change can be fixed to a certain date. Disagreements as to the content of legal rules can be resolved by references to the statutes.

Over the past thirty years there has been a considered development over societies view on drink driving. In the past it was considered to be acceptable for someone to spend an evening in a pub, consuming alcohol and then driving home. These days, society frowns on those who drive under the influence of alcohol and consider it morally wrong. This example is slightly different to the previous one however, as there has now been laws set down to try and prevent people from drink driving. This is therefore an example of the influence of societies moral views on the creation of law.

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A central debate is whether law should attempt to shape morality of whether it should stay on the sidelines. The Hart v Devlin (1957) debate was trying to answer this very question. Devlin believed that the law should reflect morality and said society has the right to punish any act that offends against its shared morality, but that it should exercise this right only sparingly. In particular, individual privacy should be respected wherever possible. He recognised that some immoral acts might be tolerated. Hart on the other hand, thought that there is little or no shared morality in the modern pluralist society ...

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