Is All Legal Morally Good

The fundamental distinction between legal and moral is easy to identify. Most people agree that what is legal is not necessarily moral and that what is immoral should not necessarily be illegal. The first legal code, the Codex of your-Nammu, was developed in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC. The Code lists prohibited acts and the penalties associated with them. The law had the support of the powers that be and was enforced throughout the empire. The Ur-Nammu codex was remarkably modern with a mixture of physical and monetary punishments. Current laws are still based on the structure of the your-Nammu Code. In the case of the Paradise Papers and offshore tax havens, obeying public morality would mean making such deals illegal, as in the case of cocaine. However, as in the case of La Salada, the amendment of the law on tax havens poses a huge challenge that no State can tackle alone.

Offshore financial activities are the result of other states offering tax breaks to attract companies to their jurisdictions – without an agreement on tax systems involving many countries, it is impossible to prevent this. Where there are still tax breaks, we can expect everyone who can to exercise their legal right. In the meantime, the court of public opinion will continue to form its own opinion about what is “right” and what is “wrong.” Now, according to Taylor, let`s add a few beings to this planet. However, let us make them completely rational and free from emotion, completely free from any purpose, need or desire. Like computers, they simply record what is happening, but they make no effort to ensure their own survival or avoid their own destruction. Is there good and evil now? Again, there is no theoretical way to do this. These beings do not care what happens; They just watch. And so they have no reason to declare anything right or wrong. Nothing matters to them, and since they are the only beings in the universe, nothing matters at all. It is therefore not the humanist who must offer an explanation of value.

What explanation might be needed for humans to naturally pursue human interests, thus linking laws and institutions to human concerns? It is only when someone tries to deviate from this most natural aspiration of all aspirations that questions must be raised. Only when someone establishes a law superior to what is good for humanity should doubts be expressed. Because here an explanation or justification of a moral basis makes sense. The burden of proof lies with the one who departs from the ordinary path of morality – not on the one who continues to maintain its relevant, useful and democratically produced morality, laws and institutions. In the 1960s, liberal legislation was passed by Parliament, and England saw people like the Conservative Lord Devlin soften his stance. But when the reactionary movements of the 1980s took hold, a handbrake on liberalization was applied: Margaret Thatcher would do her best to bring the liberalization vehicle to the opposite. In 1988, his government “passed a new law to lower the legal limit on abortion. from the 28th week of pregnancy to the 18th week of pregnancy week of pregnancy. A few months later, his government passed a law that “prohibited local authorities and schools from `promoting` homosexuality.” The statement is often used to justify an action that is morally questionable but is not formally prevented by any type of law or rule. We hear it a lot these days, especially in the context of politicians, their business relationships, campaign financing, electoral processes, et cetera. Imagine taking a walk in your city one evening. You arrive at an intersection with a traffic light.

The pedestrian light says stop, but the whole street is empty. You wait and wait before finally deciding to cross the road. There are no cars coming, and you keep walking. Technically, what you did was illegal. But if you asked the average person if what you did was immoral, they would probably say no. Public opinion on “good” and “evil” contradicts the legal definitions of “legal” and “illegal” on this and many other occasions. While the latter express a state`s interest in sanctioning certain exchanges or behaviors (i.e., are expressions of power and attempts to establish a certain type of social order), the former are social beliefs about the legitimacy of certain actions that may or may not conform to legal definitions. Bono buys a stake in a Lithuanian shopping mall or Lewis Hamilton importing his private jet to the Isle of Man may be perfectly legal, but the general public does not accept it as moral or legitimate. These are extraordinarily wealthy people who, with the help of tax advisors, evade their public duty to pay the same rate as low-income people in the common pot. When a private estate acting on behalf of the Queen invests in offshore private equity funds operating in notorious tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, it appears that she maximizes her financial gains by using a closed service and at the expense of the majority of her own subjects. For example, you have to obey a law that says, “Don`t kill,” because murder is wrong in the first place; Making it a law does not make it particularly morally reprehensible.

Bad governments provide other examples. In Nazi Germany, there were all kinds of laws made to deprive the Jewish people of their basic human rights. Aiding or even providing medical treatment to a Jewish citizen if you were a non-Jewish doctor was prohibited by law. But, of course, we would not regard such actions as immoral; Quite the contrary. Here, it would be morally reprehensible to follow the law. Such discrepancies between the practices of the rich and the moral revulsion felt by ordinary citizens are common. The practice seems illegitimate, but it is legal. The opposite phenomenon can also be observed. A practice may be considered morally legitimate, but it is actually prohibited. Cannabis use is illegal in most countries, where significant layers of society consider it perfectly legitimate. Since legitimacy refers to moral beliefs that are not necessarily shared uniformly in a society, societal attitudes toward illicit goods and services often differ considerably from one social group to another and at different times.

Take the history of cocaine, which went from medical breakthrough to scourge of society in a hundred years. Discovered in Germany at the end of the 19th century and legally used as a narcotic for several decades, it was banned in the mid-20th century for religious and moral reasons, especially in the United States. Currently, UK law classifies cocaine as a Class A drug, where possession can result in up to seven years in prison and its supply and production are punishable by life in prison. So we can see that without living beings with needs, there can be no right or wrong. And without the presence of more than one such living being, there can be no rules of behavior. Thus, morality is born of humanity precisely because it exists to serve humanity. Theology attempts to get out of this system, although there is no need (beyond coercion) for such a step. In his speech, Devlin countered the Wolfenden Report, arguing that the law should be both used and used to achieve “uniformity” in society. He went further, explaining that the laws against homosexuality were there because the strong sense of “disgust” in society was “deeply felt.” The presence of disgust, he said, “is a good indication that the limits of [tolerance] are being reached. No society can do without intolerance, indignation and disgust; They are the forces behind the moral law.

We want to catch the bad guys and promote justice. But how can this happen if we don`t denounce immoral behavior, even if it`s legal? Perhaps our willingness to give people carte blanche when they do bad things, even if they are legal, undermines the likelihood that people will follow the rules, let alone the spirit of the rule. In what became known as Hart`s “separability thesis,” he argued that a law like one requiring a person to drive on the right side of the road might be good law, but it`s not a moral principle. You would never go to Britain and say that my morality commands me to drive on the right and that I feel morally compromised if I drive on the left. Morality, he argued, can influence law, but it is not synonymous with law. On the other hand, laws against dangerous driving (or, for example, murder), for example, are undoubtedly influenced by morality, but they are also part of the socio-bureaucratic order. And well-ordered states are not necessarily moral states. Devlin`s assertion that laws are there to uphold morality was, as Hart pointed out, simply factually incorrect. To give an example of complexity, consider the case of La Salada in Argentina, Latin America`s largest market for counterfeit clothing. Argentine society is rather ambivalent towards the market, but on the whole it tolerates it because it provides clothing to middle- and low-income families who otherwise could not afford such products. Politicians tolerate them on the one hand for the same reason and on the other hand because their tolerance creates political support and jobs.

So why not legalize? The legalization of La Salada would include the repeal of regulations on safe working practices (clothes are made in sweatshops that violate many labor laws), the repeal of trademark laws (illegal marking of clothes with logos such as Nike, Adidas, and Disney), and the enforcement of corporate taxes.