Summary
Summary Law and Morality
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The relationship between law and morality with example from throughout the course. Cases and key concepts.
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The Relationship between Law and Morals – use this as an overviewor perhaps as a kind of checklist of content / ideas.
i. It is usually important to define laws and moral and to
explain the distinction between legal rules and moral rules –
see notes.
ii. It is essential to consider how law and morality are related
(coincidence of legal and moral rules) and how they are not
(divergence).
iii. Consider the ‘intersecting circles idea’ – i.e. there are
moral rules with no legal dimension, there is an overlap and
there are legal rules with little or no moral connection.
iv. Indeed, some of our legal rules can be traced back a long
time to the teachings of the Bible – consider murder or theft and
perhaps consider whether these rules would have arisen in any
society not just one where the Bible has been influential?
v. Other laws, however, have a less obvious Christian moral
influence – consider the law’s view of marriage or its traditional
approach to Sunday trading; perhaps consider how this has
changed as public morality has changed.
vi. It is important to consider how changes in public morality
have influenced both judicial law changes (the common law)
and legislative changes (statute law). Some ideas:
· The law changes in the 1960s were said to reflect the more
‘permissive’ attitude to morality that was characteristic of that
decade. Key Acts – The Abortion Act 1967 and The Sexual
Offences Act 1967, which legalised homosexuality. Consider
also how this is an on-going process as public morality changes,
the law updates itself – in 1994 the age of consent for
homosexuality was reduced to 18 form 21 and then in 2000, it
was reduced to age 16.
· It is often worth mentioning that sometimes statute law is
aimed at influencing the public moral viewpoint – consider anti-
discrimination legislation.
· It is important to cover the different philosophical views of this
process. The influence of Mill and Hart and the corresponding
‘liberal view’ versus the Stephen – Devlin view and the
corresponding ‘conservative view’. It is possible to suggest that
since the 1960s, the Mill-Hart view has been more influential –
the Wolfenden Committee accepted Hart’s view that moral
views should not regulate private conduct simply because
people disapproved of it.
· Mention morality’s influence on the common law; there are
various points you can make here: just as with statute law, as
the public’s own moral views change, the common changes to
reflect this (see case of Gillick v Norfolk and Wisbech
AHA 1986 or the case of R v R (marital rape case) – you could
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