Legislation and Morality

 LEGISLATION AND MORALITY

Many laws are based on moral rules, even rights are considered to be rules. The main principles of morality like good, right, just, care, fairness, even love are coded in judicial and law enforcement procedures and statutes.

However, moral reasoning is considered to be practical in that the individual weighs the reasons for following a moral rule or norm in terms of rightness and in terms of consequences as punishment or perhaps happiness.

Where laws are like rules and rules do not quite get at intuitions or evaluation of evidence and state of mind, e.g. preponderance of the evidence or propensity of the evidence standards - two different things. Kohlberg and Piaget for example make a key distinction when describing moral development between a rules orientation and an intentional orientation. Likewise, moral philosophy contains the key distinction between utilitrianism and deontological ethics, or consequentialism vs. rightness.

The individual is always faced with the difference between "following the law" and deciding whether s/he really has to act in a certain way under given circumstances (the Normative Problem: Why do I have to do that?). This dilemma can also be portrayed in terms of positive rights to act in a certain way or negative rights to refrain from acting in a certain way.

Morality is clearly legislated and legislative decisions are usually moral. In the US, when SCOTUS finds a legislative decision suspect, it rejects that legislation as law, but on the basis of Law and not necessarily as moral depending on your moral perspective.  Since moral perspectives are plural, governments tend to narrow the moral issues down into categories or statutes, a rule orientation. But, courts must deal with interpretations of situationally conflicting values like obligations and ends and rights. The two levels of the judicial government: law enforcement and prosecution must also contend with practical discretionary reasoning or weighing of which rules and principles are appropriate in a particular situation.

Legislation addresses moral concerns which are modified by the judiciary.