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> I'm not sure what you mean > by this. That things often continue to be legal (or illegal) well after the consensus on their morality has shifted. And that i

• John23832 10y ago
  Well yes. Law's are codified at a certain time. And then the law changes, and morality is codified at the new time. You really can't judge the morality of an action when removed from the instance and context that action happened in... I guess I should have said codified at a certain time, but I thought that was implied.
  • nzjrs 10y ago
    > You really can't judge > when removed from the > instance and context that > -action happened in... Sure you can. Rape, murder, slavery, that sort of thing.
    • John23832 10y ago
      But you really can't. I can stand here today and say that chattel slavery in the antebelum was wrong. But I'm saying that today, with today's morals. Time machine back to the 1840's, the moral landscape is much different, and slavery is accepted. There's even moral justification for it. Standing here in 2016 I can see that that justification is bunk, but back then it stood. It's the same issue that researchers run into when talking about the acceptability of cannablism in native cultures. Once your removed from the act, both in space and time, you've lost the moral context. To bring us back to our original topic, one of the purposes of codified law is to place a moral stake in the ground that serves as a reference point for everyone. You can judge people by those laws/morals after they were created (and before they are superceded by a new set of laws/morals), but you can't judge those that came before by a moral stake that didn't exist when they acted.
      • nzjrs 10y ago
        Can't say I agree, but thanks for the discussion.