Discussions Ethics and Law

* All questions are taken and modified from Billington R. (2003) Living Philosophy: An Introduction to Moral Thought (3rd edition), RoutledgeFalmer

Q1) Is it ever morally right to break the law?
See if you can decide on situations where this apparent impossibility, or absurdity, becomes a fair response to a situation. You may well have examples of your own, but here are a few suggestions to get the discussion under way:
(i) The pacifist in wartime who refuses to support his country’s military machine.
(ii) The husband who is driving his wife, heavily into labour, to the nearest maternity ward, saves precious minutes by driving straight over a roundabout, and then parks the car in a no parking zone near the entrance to the ward.
(iii) The enlisted soldier who, at the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, toured the UK, denouncing Britain’s involvement in this operation.
(iv) Jean-Paul Sartre visiting French troops in Algeria during the battle for that country’s independence, seeking to persuade them to lay down their arms in the cause of a ‘greater justice’.
(v) Jean Valjean, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.
Q2) What changes, if any, would you like to see in the law of your country for ethical reasons?
Below are a few suggestions which may spark you off:
(i) The legalisation of marriages between homosexuals.
(ii) The legalisation of cannabis (and other drugs?)
(iii) The ‘demystifying’ of court procedure by, say, greater informality in the style of speech, holding trials in less imposing buildings.
(iv) A stronger emphasis, with greater penalties for law-breakers, on ecological or environmental misdemeanours; i.e. multiply the powers of environmental health officers.
Q3) Why should crime be punished (or should it be punished at all)?
(‘All punishment is mischief; all punishment is itself evil’ – Bentham)
(a) To repay wrong-doing? – the deontological approach: all crime carries its punishment as the other side of the coin – an ‘eye for an eye’ (Kant). Connection clear if death the punishment for murder: what, on this basis, should be the punishment for rape, or fraud, blackmail, or robbery?
(b) To discourage others (deterrent)? Does punishment deter – e.g. capital punishment for murder? Do prisons deter?
(c) To protect society?
(d) To educate wrong-doers (reformative)? Accepting that this rules out capital punishment, is there any evidence that prisons reform? (Over 50 per cent of first-time prisoners return to prison for at least a second time.)