This is the reason why the Government of India is trying its best to eliminate the evil of untouchability. It has already framed laws against untouchability. It is rather a sin to adopt the policy of discrimination on the grounds of caste and creed, colour and race, clans and tribes, groups and classes.
The government is taking measures to prohibit the drinking of wine. Drinking is a sin and at the same time, it is illegal and child marriages were prohibited. The foregoing discussion makes it very clear that law and morality are very closely related to each other. One is the complement of the other. Gettell maintains that the law which are not in accordance with the moral concept of the people cannot be possibly applied and the laws sanctity….
Democracy does not generally have any such law as opposed to morality. Wilson has very correctly observed that the law of a state is the result of the development of morality in the state.
The first point of difference is that laws are enforced by the state whereas canons of morality are followed at the call of institution. If one disobeys the commands of law or violates the laws, he is liable to be punished by the state but if one fails to observe the scruples of morality, he is not liable to be awarded physical punishment.
The severest punishment that can be awarded to a person for not observing the scruples of morality is his social boycott. Hence, law punishes only those persons who violate laws by their external actions. For example, law punishes a person only when he-commits a theft or dacoity or murder or any other physical crime.
Law cannot punish a person for telling a lie or for abusing some-one. Telling lies, condemning someone, showing disgrace to others, being ungrateful and many other internal actions of man are sins but they are not crimes. For example, telling lies, showing disgrace to others, feeling greedy, being ungrateful and not helping the poor, are not against the spirit of law.
Not only this, sometimes the adoption of immoral policies by the state for the cause of common welfare is not illegal in the eyes of laws. Machiavelli maintained that even the immoral practices are legal, if they are applied for the benefit of the state. For example, it is not a sin not to keep to the left or to drive the vehicle fast in the market. The fact is that the canons of morality are concerned with the moral duties whereas the laws of the state are concerned with the legal duties.
For example, a large number of people think it immoral to eat meat and drink wine. But at the same time, there are people in India who think it quite moral to eat meat and drink wine. The laws which are not based on the sentiment of morality are less effective and less permanent. For example, Sharda Act is quite ineffective these days. In the end, we can say that morality cannot be thrust upon the state. And it is also clear that law cannot cover all the ground of morality.
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Our partners OpenLearn works with other organisations by providing free courses and resources that support our mission of opening up educational opportunities to more people in more places. Find out more Support us. Sanctions are invariably imposed for the infringement of a legal obligation.
There is no official sanction for immoral behaviour, although society often creates its own form of censorship. Morality cannot be deliberately changed, rather it evolves slowly. Legal principles need to incorporate a degree of certainty. This should be easy enough to see for a person open to the truth; but many people's minds have set into superficial ways of thinking, and they will not react unless they have been led on, step by step, to deeper reflection and awareness.
Law is an enactment made by the state. It is backed by physical coercion. Its breach is punishable by the courts. It represents the will of the state and realizes its purpose. Laws reflect the political, social and economic relationships in the society. It determines rights and duties of the citizens towards one another and towards the state. It is through law that the government fulfils its promises to the people. It reflects the sociological need of society.
Law and morality are intimately related to each other. Laws are generally based on the moral principles of society. Both regulate the conduct of the individual in society. They influence each other to a great extent. Laws, to be effective, must represent the moral ideas of the people.
But good laws sometimes serve to rouse the moral conscience of the people and create and maintain such conditions as may encourage the growth of morality. Laws regarding prohibition and spread of primary education are examples of this nature.
Morality cannot, as a matter of fact, be divorced from politics. The ultimate end of a state is the promotion of general welfare and moral perfection of man. It is the duty of the state to formulate such laws as will elevate the moral standard of the people. The laws of a state thus conform to the prevailing standard of morality. Earlier writers on Political Science never made any distinction between law and morality.
Plato's Republic is as good a treatise on politics as on ethics. In ancient India, the term Dharma connoted both law and morality. Law, it is pointed out, is not merely the command of the sovereign, it represents the idea of right or wrong based on the prevalent morality of the people. Laws which are not supported by the moral conscience of the people are liable to become dead letters.
For example laws regarding Prohibition in India have not succeeded on account of the fact that full moral conscience of the people has not been aroused in favor of such laws. The total cost of such an attempt may well be greater than the social gain. The central themes of positivism are the contentions: firstly, that the existence of law rests upon identifiable social facts and, secondly, that it is necessary to maintain a conceptual distinction between law and morality.
In this essay I will examine the positivist assertion that law is identifiable independently of morality, with a particular focus on the theory of H. A Hart. Law regulates and controls the external human conduct. It is not concerned with inner motives. A person may be having an evil intention in his or her mind but law does not care for it. Law will move into action only when this evil intention is translated into action and some harm is actually done to another person.
All the individuals are equally subjected to it. It does not change from man to man. Political laws are precise and definite as there is a regular organ in every state for the formulation of laws. It enjoys the sanction of the state. The fear of punishment acts as a deterrent to the breach of political law. Morality: 1. It is concerned with the whole life of man.
The province of law is thus limited as compared with that of morality because law is simply concerned with external actions and docs not take into its fold the inner motives. Morality condemns a person if he or she has some evil intentions but laws are not applicable unless these intentions are manifested externally.
Morality is variable. It changes from man to man and from age to age. Every man has his own moral principles. It does not enjoy the support of the state. Morality is studied under a separate branch of knowledge known as Ethics. The state is the supreme condition of the individual moral life, for without the state no moral life is possible.
The state, therefore, regulates other organizations in the common interest. The state, however, has a direct function in relation to morality. Both law and morality imply human freedom. Clearly, without freedom one cannot speak of morality. But the same holds for law, for if it were automatically and not freely obeyed, men would be mere robots. Law is not a simple indication of what happens, such as the law of physics; it is an admonition to free persons about what they are required to do if they wish to live freely and responsibly in society; and it normally carries with it a sanction or punishment to be imposed on whoever is shown to have acted against given norms of conduct.
Just law, properly understood, appeals to freedom. Nevertheless one of the most generalized liberal ideas is that law is by nature the enemy of freedom. Servais Pinckaers holds that Catholic moralists have gone through many centuries under the influence of this mentality which has led, by reaction, to the anti-law approach of much of contemporary moral theology.
In this view, law and freedom were seen as "two opposed poles, law having the effect of limitation and imposing itself on freedom with the force of obligation. Freedom and law faced each other as two proprietors in dispute over the field of human actions.
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