Nature of Rights: Should Morals Play a Part in Law?

Nature of rights: should morals play a part in law?
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Why moral enforcement matters
Morality and values reflect the society’s beliefs and attitudes, while law cannot be alienated from morality. Law is associated with policies and expected standards of human behavior that are regulated in a community, state or country. Controversies surrounding enforcement morality mainly emerge when law enforcement fails to protect people affected by dirt harms (Greenawalt, 1995). Since morality sets the standards to assess human conduct, morality is associated with practical reasoning and people know what is expected of them. In law, people are punished for violating standards and laws. Both morality and law are concerned with practical reasoning as there are rights and wrongs, which are either virtues or vices in morality reasoning. Morality is non- institutionalized compared to law, while legal institutions enforce law to ensure that human conduct is compliant with the accepted norms.
Morals should be considered in law where there is a need to protect the society’s moral welfare. Even though, there is controversy on enforcing morality, the judiciary officers are called upon to give their ruling when values are in conflict with morality. There are uncertainties in enforcing public morality, but morality also complements law since they guide judges to make decisions that reflect the values of a society. At other times, morality is also closely associated with beliefs, culture and values. Each society is distinct and legal practitioners recognize that they do not practice in a vacuum. Even in cases where people are judged to have gone against the accepted norms, this is an offence to the society rather than an individual or group of people as is common in common law
The society requires that people abide by certain moral values and of non compliance is an offense. There is a social interest on the issue of morality especially in criminal law and this should be considered in criminal law, since people pass judgment on what is good and evil. However, collective judgment is necessary as this affects the society, and the society is justified in using moral judgment (Kramer, 2012). In a society, people determine how others ought to conduct themselves, and enforcing morality then becomes necessary to maintain the moral structure, fabric and institutions. The state even goes further to legislate and protect the society’s moral integrity against immorality and social disintegration.
When morals should not be considered
Despite law and morality being interlinked morals need not be considered in law since they are subjectives.tre are no objective authorities that determine that human behavior is either good or bad. Since one cannot claim that morality is objectively true so is law not being natural. Additionally, determining where law or a legal position is valid is also subjective, similar to moral viewpoints that extend from personal and subjective views. Judges increasingly hold that subjective moral stances should not be the basis for legislations or cases for interfering with guaranteed constitutional rights.
Besides subjectivity of morality, people make a personal choice ...