One of the common refrains around the law is that it's not morality. I did a quick (as in, I read a bit of three links) Google search just to get a better sense of what's going on and there seem to be two ideas worth mentioning:
- these are distinct right/wrong systems
- they are distinct and, what's more, law should not become morality
That latter point is more intriguing. On its face, it seems abhorrent... the purpose of a just society should be to converge from its present state to its ideal state: part of that will be a steady alignment of law and morality. On occasion, the law may set morality (in which case, the two converge), but, in general, the law will evolve to become like how morality was in the very recent past (on account of lawmakers, politicians and judges, being entrenched in their moral views by the time they're in a position to make law). Anything else is anti-democratic and anti-human... it is to say that people have no special insight into their own lives and instead some other group of people have the special insight into those same lives.
Of course, I read so little of so few results, I wonder if perhaps the point is what I'd more naturally write as "what's legal should not define what's moral", in which case it's a bit harder to see what's wrong with the idea.
But law is but one aspect of a just society's fundamental set-up, and I think it would be silly to exclude policy more generally from the discussion. And, again, I would argue that a just society should be pushing itself to resemble its ideals. So, if you're going to make the school leaving age 16, you would offer a qualification that would ordinarily be obtained in the year the pupil turns 16, say, because to do otherwise would be immoral.
Anyway, what say ye, NSG? Ought the law reflect the morality?