Legal Moralism In Criminal Law
Legal moralism is the view that the criminal law is basically allowed to enforce the moral law. In other words anything that is wrong can be a proper subject of criminal law. If something is wrong it can be criminalized. That’s a very broad view point but that is why legal moralists prefer this view point. Problems can arise when trying to be a legal moralist in a pluralistic kind of society. With the clash of different cultures and religions. Different kinds of groups will have different ideas of what is right and wrong. An example is if you have one religion that believes that eating pork is wrong then we would be able to use the criminal law to say it’s wrong and illegal to eat pork. When someone else that likes to eat pork and answers the question that “I do not think it is wrong to eat pork”. That person that is questioning the law, that person’s liberty is being limited. That person’s freedom to eat pork is being taken away just on the basis of someone else’s moral beliefs.
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Legal moralism will violate the being equal part of the law. In other words we are elevating the moral views of the anti-pork people above the moral views of the pork liking people. It looks to the point we would be treating the different groups moral values differently. This of course would be unacceptable from the point of view from the idea of our liberal democracy government and what is should be
Legal moralism will violate the being equal part of the law. In other words we are elevating the moral views of the anti-pork people above the moral views of the pork liking people. It looks to the point we would be treating the different groups moral values differently. This of course would be unacceptable from the point of view from the idea of our liberal democracy government and what is should be