WMN: t3_3fnv5p_t1_ctr0e7q--TIO1

[TITLE]

CMV: The law should never be used as a moral compass

[Frisheid]

First of all, the *law* I'm referring to isn't the law of any particular country, just laws in general. Imagine sitting on the bus when an elderly woman comes in. The rules don't tell you to give up your seat for her, but you do. This short scenario illustrates that rules and morals are two different things. However, I see more and more people defending actions saying it was "legal", and therefore it should be alright. The death of Cecil the lion is an (extreme) example: the man who shot him defended himself by declaring that what he did was legal. As the global outrage over his actions showed us, it was however completely immoral. Another example: bankers. I read in a book that bankers that are considered "professional" disregard their own morals as much as possible and instead try to do as much as is legally possible. Immoral bankers and brokers are a core part of why the 2008 crisis was able to happen. I think this illustrates what happens when people use the law as "moral compass": immoral behavior. Secondly, I think this is caused by the fact that our law is not our morals themselves but rather these morals applied into (simplified) rules. Thirdly, I think it's impossible to enforce socially appropriate behavior like giving up your bus seat. This follows from my second viewpoint: because rules are simplified results of our morals, they can never cover every aspect of our lives, therefore leaving gaps for bus travellers and dentists and bankers to exploit. **I think it's up to us to be aware of this and never use the law as a moral compass. Please, change my view.** _______ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

[imanatheistsowhat]

I thought our morals are what made the specific laws in the first place.

[Frisheid]

I agree, I said that in my second viewpoint.

[vl99]

Written law is the closest a society can get to a generally commonly accepted moral compass. There are obviously many cases where immoral actions can be committed while in complete accordance with the law, but this is more a failing of the person who wrote the law to account for loopholes than it is a failing of these to account for moral truths. Just as with anything else you can use as a moral compass, the law is imperfect and in constant revision, but it is certainly the most comprehensive document we have to direct us towards a more moral lifestyle. As societal norms change, the laws will change with them. For example homosexuality used to be thought of as immoral, though while quite a lot still think this way, enough of a majority has agreed that it is moral, so it is no longer against the law in the US. But just because laws have loopholes and just because the law takes time to catch up doesn't mean it can't function as an effective moral compass in a pinch.

[Frisheid]

So if one of these [gaps between morality and illegality](http://i.imgur.com/wXh2dad.jpg) is a failure of the law, should we try to ban all immoral behavior? I can imagine that being forced to give up your bus seat to the elderly might make you less sympathetic to them, which could cause you to stay seated when there aren't any law enforcers around. Or that no-one would be any happier if there was a ban on snatching away the biggest piece of cake at a birthday party. This way, there will always be a gap between moral and illegal. It's up to society to act nicely and stay out of that gap. Making gay marriage possible in the US is more of a result of a moral thing being illegal, which is practically the law failing to do it's job. To conlude, I don't think the gap between moral and illegal is a bad thing, like you do. I only think that people who step into this gap, meaning they use the law as a moral compass, are acting badly.

[vl99]

Written law stands as a living constantly changing reflection of general societal consensus on moral behavior. I'm not claiming it's the other way around. But if we can't use law as a general consensus then we don't have anything outside of personal feelings, which make an even poorer compass when it comes to any action affecting anyone outside yourself.

[strapt313]

[STA-CITE]> Written law stands as a living constantly changing reflection of general societal consensus on moral behavior. [END-CITE]No it most certainly does not. How many people have a say in the laws passed? 500? 100? And those laws effect 350 million people. Just because 30% of the people vote crappy politicians into office and they go on to make laws, does not mean that they represent society as a whole. I'm not sure how you could have come to that conclusion.

[it-was-taken]

You're examples all lean towards the side of someone doing something bad, and justifying it because it was legal. However, if the law shouldn't be your moral compss, then you have to look at it in the other light as well. What if people are doing things that the law considers bad, but they consider morally upright? Are they entitled to act on their own moral reasoning rather than the ones the elected officials of our nation have considered? If other people are influenced by your actions, should they really be controlled more by the whims of your own conscience than representative of our community? For example, let's say you think it's not morally reprehensible to kill a drug dealer because they impact many lives negatively through their occupation. Is it morally right for you to act on your own moral logic, disregarding entirely what your community's moral logic has asked of you? Isn't it best at times to acknowledge that while you may have a conflicting opinion, you are not a god and your personal beliefs may be secondary to the larger community's moral beliefs if it affects other people in your community?

[Frisheid]

If the law is more restrictive than your morals, I think the law should always have the upper hand. [This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/3fnv5p/cmv_the_law_should_never_be_used_as_a_moral/ctqbi8u) turned my statement around something like you do.

[copsgonnacop]

In all of your examples, you contend that something isn't moral just because it is legal. Does your view include the reverse as well; that just because something is illegal, doesn't mean it is immoral? Or if something is illegal is it, by default, also immoral?

[Frisheid]

[I illustrated what you're looking for and what I'm mentioning in my post \(accidentally creating the flag of Italy\).](http://i.imgur.com/wXh2dad.jpg) You're looking for something that is illegal yet moral. I think you could call this a failure of the law. For example, smoking weed could be considered okay. It's still illegal in a lot of states and most countries, though. I haven't thought about the connection between legal and moral a lot yet, but I think most illegal things are also immoral.

[NuklearFerret]

I think your assuming that everyone is a generally moral person. If everyone had a 100% agreeable and reliable moral compass, and always acted in accordance with it with no exception, we wouldn't need laws in the first place. For example, laws are extremely good as moral compasses for psychopaths who completely lack a moral compass of their own. For a less extreme example, if your moral compass somehow allows you to drive drunk, I think most of us would agree that you should use the law as a moral compass instead.

[BolshevikMuppet]

[STA-CITE]>The death of Cecil the lion is an (extreme) example: the man who shot him defended himself by declaring that what he did was legal. As the global outrage over his actions showed us, it was however completely immoral. [END-CITE]Well, let's start here with the question of how you're defining "moral" or "immoral." You seem to be adopting a kind of "if enough people are vocally against it" standard for this first part, but is that really your system of determining was is moral? If so, how do you know the number of people who actually were okay with his actions and simply didn't say anything, and that the apparent overwhelming opposition was really just a smaller number of more outraged people? Essentially, you seem to be treating volume of the voices for the number of voices. So let's say 51% of the world population was okay with it (a silent majority, to be a bit hackneyed), would that mean his actions were moral? On the other side, as recently as 2013 a majority of Americans opposed gay marriage, did that make gay people who did get married in that year immoral? [STA-CITE]>Another example: bankers. I read in a book that bankers that are considered "professional" disregard their own morals as much as possible and instead try to do as much as is legally possible. Immoral bankers and brokers are a core part of why the 2008 crisis was able to happen. [END-CITE]In most professions where one represents the interests of others there is an ethical obligation to do what is best for one's clients within the bounds of the law, rather than doing what you would consider morally best. While also true of bankers this is exemplified in doctors or lawyers. And how are you determining whether the bankers actually *did* act immorally? You seem to be taking that for granted here, but other than "there was a bad outcome" have nothing indicating they actually acted immorally in their specific roles. [STA-CITE]>I think it's up to us to be aware of this and never use the law as a moral compass. Please, change my view. [END-CITE]Well, okay, but the dentist in your first example did believe he was acting morally (since otherwise he wouldn't have done it). His argument that it was legal is not an argument that he felt it immoral but did it because it was legal, but rather that it was legal and so no one else can force their morality on to him. Your argument doesn't seem to be "we shouldn't use law as a moral compass" (since the dentist probably *does* have a moral compass outside of law, but one which includes killing lions) but rather that anyone whose moral compass does not go above and beyond what the law requires is immoral purely by virtue of not being closer to your moral code. What if my moral compass says "I got this seat first, and I don't give a damn about that old lady"? That's not using law as a moral compass, that's having a moral compass which does not require me to give up my seat and there not being a legal requirement to do so. Which is really all a moral compass represents: what behaviors do I believe I should engage in, and what behaviors should I not engage in, within the bounds of the laws which I must abide by. Which means neither the moral compass of "let the old lady take my seat" nor the moral compass of "fuck her I don't want to stand" is using the law as that compass.

[Frisheid]

∆ Woah. You *really* went deep there. First of all, you're right - I was making some assumptions about the definition of morality. Truth is, I don't know the definition. The question "what is moral" seems close enough to the question "what is good/bad", something philosophers have been giving themselves headaches over for centuries, even millennia. As for your definition of a moral compass, you're right again. As I have responded to comments above, my statement has simply become one about what people's morals should be and not whether the law should be involved. Changing my statement to "people shouldn't act upon bad morals" or something similar would be what the Dutch call "a truth as a cow" - a statement so obvious that it would be silly to defend it.

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[nikoberg]

People who use the defense that what they do is legal are not usually arguing sincerely that what they do is "right" from a moral perspective EDIT: because it is legal. Rather, either they don't consider their action immoral in the first place or don't care whether their actions were moral or not. The principle they're using as a shield is not the idea that the law is always morally right. Very few adults believe that "moral" is identical with "legal." However, most people agree that there is a general moral principle that you should follow laws, as laws are usually in place for the good of society. If no one followed any laws, we'd be pretty badly off. So when someone says that the immoral action they took was legal, we shouldn't read it as thinking laws define morality. Instead, we should view laws as an additional moral constraint we place on ourselves to avoid violence and chaos.

[Frisheid]

∆ I like the thought that the people themselves are immoral instead of using the law as a moral compass. That would change my statement to "people shouldn't be immoral" which is not a very insightful thing to say. I now think my statement is still true but it's just less relevant because the law is merely deterring immoral people from doing immoral things, instead of actively giving them morals by which they live.

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[copsgonnacop]

[STA-CITE]> People who use the defense that what they do is legal are not usually arguing sincerely that what they do is "right" from a moral perspective. Rather, either they don't consider their action immoral in the first place or don't care whether their actions were moral or not. [END-CITE]I think /u/nikoberg touches on a key point here, but don't quite nail it. The key point is **morals are subjective**. That means that what is moral to me, isn't necessarily moral to you. What is moral to Palmer the lion killer, isn't necessarily moral to me. So when Palmer the lion killer says "hey, killing Cecil was legal", he's not making a moral argument. He has already made the determination in his own mind that killing Cecil was moral *to him*. He made that decision when he shelled out $55k to go kill a lion. Declaring "hey, it's legal" isn't his attempt to suggest it should be moral to everyone. It is simply his way of saying "it's legal, so get off my case". The unspoken part of that is "it's legal, *and it is moral to me*, so get off my case". Directed at /u/Frisheid

[Frisheid]

∆ Nice! Your comment about subjective morals made me realize that the [gap](https://i.imgur.com/wXh2dad.jpg) which this post is basically about isn't an objective gap, but rather what most of society views as immoral. This means that the law stops people who don't consider this gap immoral from going further, into the waaayyy too immoral bits. So just as I said in the other comment, this changes my statement to "people shouldn't be immoral" which is a useless statement.

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[ghotionInABarrel]

In most cases this is correct, but there is one where it is best for someone to be amoral. Lawyers. People are both legally and morally entitled to the best possible defence under the law. This means that lawyers should disregard their personal beliefs and instead do whatever they legally and ethically (the ethics being determined by the bar) can to defend their client's interests. To do any less would be to cheat their client out of their right to legal representation.

[Crushgaunt]

Ethics do not equate morals. Ethics are an attempt at a formalized moral code that operates within a legal system. Morality doesn't really factor in.

[ghotionInABarrel]

that's my point

[sguntun]

This is an idiosyncratic distinction that seems totally invented. In both colloquial discourse and philosophical discourse, the words "ethics" and "morals" (and "ethical" and "moral," etc.) are generally taken to be synonyms.

[Crushgaunt]

I will disagree, particularly regarding philosophical discourse. This is a distinction that I've seen regularly discussed in both ethics courses and in professional environments. I wouldn't call these definitions complete or comprehensive but: Ethics are a deliberately constructed and reviewed codes of personal conduct often with a connotation of being in a professional environment while morality is more culturally enforced and ambiguous and has more flexibility between individuals.

[sguntun]

Can you point to any academic sources that make this distinction? It's true that some philosophers like to stipulate different uses for the terms (Bernard Williams is the best example here), but I think it's simply false to say that this distinction is "regularly discussed" in the philosophical literature.

[scdi]

I would think the lawyer is still doing the moral thing defending someone who has personally admitted the lawyer they are guilty, in that they are ensuring that the system as a whole continues to require the prosecutor to actually prove their case to a jury to take away someones freedom. In that, even if in this case the defendant is a rotten egg that deserves jail, defending them so there is no precedent set that would allow a person to be imprisoned without the prosecutor proving the case is the lesser evil/greater good. A lawyer whose morals don't go the same way, and who has a conviction in their morals, is probably going to be in some other field of law.

[Frisheid]

That's nice, I had't thought of that. On one hand, they're doing their job by disregarding their own morals, just like bankers do. On the other hand, though, the law is the core of their job so doing something other than the law would mean immediate failure, unlike with bankers. You might even say that by applying the law, lawyers are acting according to their own morals. This is because of what you said: *To do any less would be to cheat their client out of their right to legal representation.*