Legal Enforcement of Moral Values

Question 1

Legal enforcement of moral values

Answer 1

Principles on which moral offences are prohibited/not, by law.

1. Individual freedom to be allowed must be consistent with integrity of society.
2. Limits of such tolerance are not static but laws should be slowly changed based on morality.
3. Privacy respected as far as possible
4. Law concerned with minimum, not maximum standards of behaviour; society’s standards should be higher.

Question 2

Positivism

Answer 2

Maintains that law and morals should be kept separate.
Aristotle - law should be ‘reason, free from passion’.

Question 3

Natural Law Theory

Answer 3

Maintains that law should be used to enforce moral values.

James Fitzjames-Stephens - ‘The immorality of an action is good reason for it to be a crime and the law should be a persecution of the grosser forms of vice.’