{"id":103,"date":"2007-08-12T17:13:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T01:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=103"},"modified":"2007-08-12T17:13:02","modified_gmt":"2007-08-13T01:13:02","slug":"immoral-vs-illegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/immoral-vs-illegal\/","title":{"rendered":"Immoral vs. illegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

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:<\/p>\n

Its not just wrong, it’s illegal<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/em> 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<\/a> when it comes to trying to enforce such bans.)<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s because I believe that we should only have laws against activities that everyone unequivocally<\/em> 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:<\/p>\n

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)
\nB) Those making the law don’t really believe or care so much about its moral weight (the “power trip” theory of law making)<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

Which theory do you think best explains such a sign? (Or, feel free to suggest another.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectivist-instinct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}