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On the contrary it is a terrible awful thing, and a fantastic indicator of a poorly designed law. Laws should not impose morality.

by djbebs 5y ago

simonh 5y ago
All laws are about morality (except for those in science and maths). We often pretend they are different, or draw a distinction between behaviour constrained by laws and that constrained by personal morals, however the question of what laws to create and how they should be formulated are moral questions.
- pxc 5y ago
  Some laws are about settling convention where the specific content of the convention has no normative component, e.g., which side of the road cars drive on
  - simonh 5y ago
    Some of the specific content of the law is arbitrary yes, but the fact we have a law about which side people should drive on at all is motivated by a moral imperative. Although actually neither the right or left hand side rules are arbitrary. They were each intended to better serve a moral objective. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Why-do-the-British-drive-on-the-left/ https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Why-do-the-British-dri...
    - pxc 5y ago
      They do serve a normative aim, i.e., 'we should have drivable two-way roads', yes. I'm not sure we need to reduce all norms to 'morality'. But if we think of morality in a really broad way, like 'humans (or other sapient creatures) seeking to satisfy preferences or impose additional structure on nature or society for their own purposes in a universalizable/principled (i.e., fair) way', then definitely: laws should always be motivated in some way by morality. That's different from the claim (which I'm not saying you've made) that this relationship means that laws should always simply 'encode' moral norms in some direct sense, which imo is a common (and mistaken) simplification. But yeah I think we're on the same page.
_-david-_ 5y ago
So we should get rid of laws against murder, rape, theft, etc? Some people do not believe those things are immoral. That means when we create laws banning them we are imposing our morality onto others.

On the contrary it is a terrible awful thing, and a fantastic indicator of a poorly designed law. Laws should not impose morality.

by djbebs 5y ago

On the contrary it is a terrible awful thing, and a fantastic indicator of a poorly designed law. Laws should not impose morality.

simonh 5y ago

All laws are about morality (except for those in science and maths). We often pretend they are different, or draw a distinction between behaviour constrained by laws and that constrained by personal morals, however the question of what laws to create and how they should be formulated are moral questions.

pxc 5y ago
Some laws are about settling convention where the specific content of the convention has no normative component, e.g., which side of the road cars drive on
- simonh 5y ago
  Some of the specific content of the law is arbitrary yes, but the fact we have a law about which side people should drive on at all is motivated by a moral imperative. Although actually neither the right or left hand side rules are arbitrary. They were each intended to better serve a moral objective. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Why-do-the-British-drive-on-the-left/ https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Why-do-the-British-dri...
  - pxc 5y ago
    They do serve a normative aim, i.e., 'we should have drivable two-way roads', yes. I'm not sure we need to reduce all norms to 'morality'. But if we think of morality in a really broad way, like 'humans (or other sapient creatures) seeking to satisfy preferences or impose additional structure on nature or society for their own purposes in a universalizable/principled (i.e., fair) way', then definitely: laws should always be motivated in some way by morality. That's different from the claim (which I'm not saying you've made) that this relationship means that laws should always simply 'encode' moral norms in some direct sense, which imo is a common (and mistaken) simplification. But yeah I think we're on the same page.

_-david-_ 5y ago

So we should get rid of laws against murder, rape, theft, etc? Some people do not believe those things are immoral. That means when we create laws banning them we are imposing our morality onto others.