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Law and Legislation Vs Ethic and Moral


In today’s life very often we may catch ourselves on a thought that legal matters are usually very expensive, unpredictable and confusing.

Legal system doesn't establish or execute Justice – it is subjective and depends on many factors. Some of them are: current geopolitical situation, location, nationality, social position, weather conditions, emotions etc. Therefore legal system is guided by the communal utilitarianism principle. Decisions based on that principle could go very often perpendicular with the perception of justice of individuals or even peoples.

There is an opinion that justice and legal system is based on ethic and moral. This is a chicken and egg challenge to prove. All of it is basically rules of communal living and transactions among humans who inhabit certain area, i.e. a suburb, a town, a state, a country. So the law and legislation is an attempt to codify the rules of mutual existence for further enforcement and ease of transactions. Ethic is almost the same, but it’s not written and uniform. An attempt to codify ethic is not successful for it is almost impossible to write down uniform definitions of moral rules that will suit every situation in every location for every person.

Even the most important religious texts, as an attempt to prescribe certain rules for certain people fail to be consistent. In the Bible one page says "Thou shalt not kill" Exodus 20:13, and the other page says i.e. "He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death" Exodus 21:17. That means that the person who is involved in putting to death righteously from the law perspective will surely breach one of the Ten Commandments. This controversy exists everywhere to have an excuse in some situations to use ethic and use law against those who are not in favour in some particular situation.

Ethic and moral is an attempt to suppress the animal instincts and to make us more human. Many ethic rules are against our natural essence. This has been researched by anthropologists and neurophysiologists around the world. Law and legislation on the other hand is an attempt to make it more rational and align with the existing goals of the society. Execution of the law or some legal procedure doesn't have a goal to establish the Justice or some Good and Righteous Deed. It does the movement to maximize communal utility out of the case.

Therefore the root cause of confusion regarding legal cases and legal system is that essence of this process is a bit different to what is perceived about it.
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