Law
Moral Values
Moral values refer to the principles and beliefs that guide individuals in distinguishing right from wrong and in making ethical decisions. In the context of law, moral values can influence the development and interpretation of legal principles and standards. They play a significant role in shaping societal norms and expectations regarding behavior and justice.
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4 Key excerpts on "Moral Values"
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eBook - ePub- Amalia Amaya, Claudio Michelon, Amalia Amaya, Claudio Michelon(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Here we have to be especially careful to bear in mind the distinction between the general concept of law and the particular laws of specific legal systems. Several writers argue that the subjection of human conduct to the rule of law is a uniquely valuable ideal that represents an especially moral form of human governance. 3 On this view, our first task is to understand the intrinsically valuable nature of the general concept of law and only then turn our attention to determining the degree of intrinsic value possessed by particular empirical instantiations of the ideal. We argue below that, although legal systems can possess intrinsic value, this is not because of the necessary inherent value of the ideal of ‘lawness’. 4 Instead, we argue, the moral merits of any particular legal system depend on particular qualities of that system. These qualities may of course be shared by many other legal systems. But ontology and morality must be kept separate – there is no guarantee that where we find law we will find something of intrinsic moral worth. 3. The instrumental value of law: law as a moral advisor The law would be a good moral advisor for us if following its instructions would help us to be moral. This is the advice or instruction model of moral expertise. This model is about propositional knowledge (i.e. knowing what to do). A car repair manual gives good instructions on how to fix a car if its instructions tell us clearly what to do to fix the car and thereby help us to fix the car. But, of course, the manual itself cannot fix the car. There are two main ways in which law might play a role as a moral advisor
eBook - ePub- Gerard V. Bradley(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Intercollegiate Studies Institute(Publisher)
Casey “Mystery Passage” slipped subjectivism into law’s moral foundation, with ill effects all around. Flipping from the “good” to “bad” man’s way of looking at law introduces moral relativism. And that will not do very well, either.The challenge is to retain the internal view of law without denying what is true about the external perspective of law. Can we integrate the “ought” and “is” of law in one stable story about law?Yes, we can. In fact, we have already done so: our whole first chapter described how positive law is a huge cultural artifact—a product (if you will) made for people and presented to the community as a given. But we saw, too, that this edifice is dedicated to serving real moral ends: what law is for, its purpose. All we need to do now is extend and refine the point of chapter 1 .John Finnis writes that “for the sake of justice and a flourishing community of people in good [moral] shape . . . we need the set of rules, arrangements, processes, institutions and persons with responsibility and thus authority, the set [we commonly call the] law.” That “law”—say, the law of Indiana or of the United Kingdom—is a vast cultural artifact posited by people to order their common life. For the sake of justice we need these rules to be “clear, general, stable, capable of being complied with and explicable to any fair-minded person.”36 To put the point differently still: law works only where it achieves the appearance of solidity, as if it were a nonnegotiable fact of social interaction. Additionally, law only works where people voluntarily accept it and internalize it.Legal authority is thus a kind of moral authority. Legal reasoning is a kind of moral reasoning. Legal norms are good (that is, moral) reasons for acting—all because law is part of the answer to the question, What, all things considered, is the right thing for me to do? Law contributes to resolving that question by offering direction which, presumptively or prima facie, we are morally obliged to accept. This presumption of law’s moral bindingness can be defeated, however, and is overcome in instances where the law would direct me to do what morality holds I must never do. Thus, there can be morally justified lawbreaking.37
eBook - ePub- Jean Piaget, Leslie Smith(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Are these moral or legal? And the various types of vengeance and reprisals? And the rules relative to the sexual act, etc. etc.? All of the intermediate cases tie together the extreme poles, which alone are well defined. An essential theoretical problem is thus immediately posed for the sociology of law, namely, how to distinguish law and morality. Even in the matters that concern contemporary Western societies, the ease of making this distinction in practice in no way does away with the very great difficulty of formulating it in theory. This difficulty is attested by the multiplicity and diversity of conceptions that have been proposed by the best [p. 178] authors. We will now expound some of these conceptions, because this discussion, even in a summary form, will permit us to bring to light several of the essential aspects of this formidable question. A first group of doctrines can be characterized by the conception of a commonality of nature between law and morality: they differ only in their greater or lesser degree of collective or public coordination. This is in summary form the opinion of Duguit as well as the view of Durkheim and his school. According to Durkheim, law, like morality, is characterized by the existence of obligatory rules, sanctioned by the collective. But legal sanctions are organized into rule systems 11 whereas the sanctions that define morality are ‘diffuse’ – that is, not codified. Besides the prohibitory sanctions common to morality and law, it should be added that law also knows ‘restitutive’ sanctions unknown to morality. (There is no blame attached to restitutive sanctions; they simply compensate for damages of a material order, as in a civil case.) But since the degree of codification concerns only the external form of rules, moral and legal realities are fundamentally identical. Both proceed from the same constraint that the group exercises on individuals
eBook - ePub- Juliette Oko(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Learning Matters(Publisher)
a privileged position within the public services in working with people who often experience profound problems and significant crises in their lives which require practical solutions but have important moral consequences (p3). This means our behaviours and actions have the potential to improve people’s situation and therefore can be described as having a ‘positive outcome’. Conversely, our behaviours and actions have the potential to damage and do harm and therefore can be described as having a ‘negative outcome’. Given that social work is a purposeful activity, that is, we are expected to do something, this emphasises the need for an ethical approach in our practice. Thus we need to be clear about the values and ethics which influence and guide our behaviour and this calls to mind a number of interrelated factors to consider, including:- the influence of our personal values and their impact on our practice;
- our view about the nature and purpose of social work;
- professional values and professional codes of ethics and practice;
- the influence of ethical theories in determining how we ought to behave as professional social workers;
- components of ethical decision-making.
These are not abstract considerations but represent some of the fundamental considerations that we need to be aware of in our practice as social workers, reinforcing the centrality of values and ethics in social work. We will therefore explore these issues in more detail throughout this chapter, but to begin with, I want to clarify what is meant by the terms ‘values’ and ‘ethics’.Defining values and ethics
Values and ethics are frequently used interchangeably, but as Loewenberg and Dolgoff (1992) point out, refer to different concepts.Values are suggestive of general preferences and tend to describe what is ‘good and desirable’ shaping our beliefs and attitudes. In turn, values also have an affective quality, that is, they provoke our emotions, influencing which goals or behaviour we perceive as ‘good’ or worthwhile, or conversely, those behaviours we perceive negatively. Used in a professional context, however, the term ‘belief’ reflects the view that values are more than simply preferences or opinions (Banks, 2006). Adopting Banks’ approach, social work values refer to a:
