Immoral vs. illegal
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 12, 2007 under Collectivist instinct | 
2 Comments to Read
On my way home from a little camping trip with my sons, we stopped for gas. At the cashier’s window was a sign, no doubt created by the good State of New York, warning that buying cigarettes for minors could get you into trouble. The tag line was:
Its not just wrong, it’s illegal
This bothered me. I would be fine with either half of this message, i.e., that buying cigarettes for minors would subject one to either a moral or a legal sanctions. I don’t have a problem with laws against selling cigarettes to minors, as long as they’re enforced in a reasonable fashion. (Unlike New York, which is a little crazy when it comes to trying to enforce such bans.)
What struck me about this sign was the implied hierarchy of authority. It appears to say that ‘illegal’ should outweigh ‘immoral.’ Try this in the context of a more extreme message: Killing someone is not just wrong; hey buddy, it could get you jail time!
Maybe it’s because I believe that we should only have laws against activities that everyone unequivocally finds morally wrong that I feel that law should be the afterthought to moral repulse. To have enforcement rely with more weight on illegality than immorality says, to me, either:
A) Those of us subject to the laws but not making them are morally stunted compared to those making the laws (the “moral superiority” theory of law making)
B) Those making the law don’t really believe or care so much about its moral weight (the “power trip” theory of law making)
A corollary to the second theory is (C) that the immorality of the law is inherently unclear to the broad citizenry, which for me raises the question if there should be a law about such a thing. (I don’t believe this would apply to a ban on cigarettes sold to minors.)
Which theory do you think best explains such a sign? (Or, feel free to suggest another.)
geoff manne said,
I think the explanation is perhaps less nefarious (but you may still find it quite troubling). The hierarchy is not a hierarchy of intrinsic authority, but a hierarchy of effective authority. The reality is that many (most?) people are little motivated by fear of moral consequences (which for many people may be zero) but very motivated by fear of large fines and/or jail time. The sign just reflects this reality.
M. Hodak said,
I certainly agree with you, Geoffe, about the marginal effect of the law on behavior. My real concern, not stated too clearly in my post, is about the net effect on respect for the law.
I’m persuaded by Thomas Sowell’s view that there is simply not enough enforcement power on earth to prevent any crimes, including murder or theft, if ordinary people feel unconstrained by social sanctions against the proscribed behaviors. In other words, he argued that informal sanctions are (or maybe were) much more potent than formal ones.
So when I saw this sign, I recalled that, and figured that the marginal benefit lay in increasing moral, rather than legal, pressure. Applying Sowell’s lesson means that if you want to reduce the number of people buying cigarettes for kids, you get more power from suggesting what a d*ck one must be to do such a thing rather than stressing the (highly unlikely) legal consequences of doing so. In fact, stressing legal consequences over moral consequences, especially when the morality is ambiguous (think drug laws against adults) would be much more likely to undermine respect for the law than to reduce the proscribed behavior.