法律和道德的关系

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本人男,汉族,1987年11月出生于湖北。2010年武汉科技大学法学本科毕业。毕业后,先后在越南(15个月)、埃塞俄比亚(2013年6月至今)工作,热爱法律英语。在学习之余,随手写下了这些文章,供各位在学习、考试中参考,但请不要复制或抄袭。如有疑问或需要可联系本人,QQ:1003703168。 Relationship between law and morality

The relationship between morality and law has been discussed and researched by lots

of scholars for a long time and there is no widespreadly agreed theory about it. I think

knowing about the emergence and history of law may be helpful for obtaining

appropriate sense about the subject.

At first provisions of law were mainly about the execution of the military orders. In

primitive society, there was little food to support lives of humans. In order to gain

more food and enlarge territory, people formed tribes and often was at war. People

must win the war. Therefore the leaders of a tribe promulgated rules to unite people to

fight. This is the primary form of law. Due to the inefficiency of social production and

lack of knowledge about the nature, and in order to survive, the law at that time

regulated many aspects of the society and its methods of punishment were very

various and cruel. With continuously development and civilization of the human

society and increasing population, law can not control every aspects of the society. It

mainly because: (1) in ancient time very simple structure of the society and social

relationship enabled law to rule the society widely and efficiently; but now everything

changed, new social classes arose and social relationships became more complex. It is

impossible to adjust everything of the society by law. (2) people began to think that

law is not always the best way to make an orderly society, besides people began to

tolerate some behaviors which had been treated as unlawful. The most typical

example is the decriminalization of homosexuality. Homosexuality once had been

treated as a crime and would lead to severe penalty in the past but now people think it

is a matter of privacy and should not be interfered by law. Law has reduced its scope

of regulation and morality arose to regulate the surplus areas once controlled by law.

Control through morality is much better than law under some circumstances.

From above analysis I conclude that morality arose much later than law and they are

two separate things. Morality arose and exists to supplement the law but law is

separated from morality and has no connection with morality. Law is neutral from

morality. I therefore agree the theory initiated by Joseph Raz, that is, the rule of law is

not morally valuable in it self, we have to obey law only because they are laws.