LAW AND MORALITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article deals with the question of law and morality- whether they related or whether law and morality can be separated. It shows various instances where law and morality are complementary to each other and hence cannot be separated. Further it will also reveal situations where law and morality independent of each other. 

The first step is to define the terms ‘law’ and ‘morality’. Law has been defined in different ways by different schools. Natural school of thought presupposes the notion of nature, and the notion of nature is not coeval with the human thought. Therefore, natural law determines what is right and wrong and that has power or is valid by nature. Law according to various naturalists is the moral standard which governs the human behavior and is derived from the behavior and nature of the world. Furthermore, according to this school law and morality are dependent on each other which mean that morals are basis of law. Basically, it is just difficult to maintain that morally bad law is not law. The idea that law must pass, as it were, a kind of moral filter in order to count as law strikes most jurists as incompatible with the legal world as we know it. Contemporary natural philosophers maintain that the moral content of norms, and not just their social origin, also forms a part of the conditions of legal validity. A law would be effective only if it has passed the test of morality. For example John Finnis in his views says that natural law is not a constraint on the legal validity of positive laws, but mainly as an elucidation of an ideal of law in its fullest, or highest sense, concentrating on the ways in which law necessarily promotes the common good. One is tempted to say that the Stoic philosophers treat the study of law as if it were a moral virtue, i.e. as something, which could be demanded from most men. Law is ‘the guide of life and the teacher of duties’ it is the dictate of reason regarding human life.