Legislating Morality and Its Inherent Relationship with Law

DAY 334 CHALLENGE “People should not try to legislate morality.” DEFENSE Any degree of scrutiny causes this claim to fall apart. First, law deals with the ordering of human affairs—what people are and are not to do—and this has an inescapably moral dimension. This is obvious with laws prohibiting things like murder and rape, but it is true of legislation in general. Laws that redistribute wealth or raise public funds to be spent on certain projects imply a set of values. Even laws that seem completely arbitrary from one perspective (e.g., drive on the right side of the road rather than...