Robert E Goodin Legal Moralism Summary

An Epistemic Case for Legal Moralism

Robert E Goodin starts his writing by focusing on the morals of the law and raising the question how common people know how to fallow the principals and the written law. Is it because of the intuition and the way it has been coded in us or something else? Should name calling historical figures be added into law or fallow more moral code?

He firstly focuses on the topic of legal moralism in what defense he says the law can do what it is socially suppose to do – guide people’s behaviors and give penalties and sanctions when they fail to fallow the law. But with the laws that we can see as common sense come also the ones that raise the more knowledgeable of us into higher statues. As he refers in his writing,

Although the “ignorance of the law is no excuse” can be criticized, it carries valuable meaning in the court system and making the justice system more smooth. One can simply not claim, he or she had no idea of the law, if that is not made into an acceptable excuse, unless it is the point of natural justice is taken into consideration. He also points out that it is almost impossible for people to know entire US code by heart and be well informed in all of its content, as there are just simply too many laws. But it is much more likely that people know the customary law that deals with standards of community that have been established long time ago and fallow it unreflectively. According to Fuller modern laws relate to specific forms of activity that have been expanding over the tme, such as carrying on particular professions or businesses. So the people who are todays modern business owners or have a very specific social role could and should

But to measure it we need to know the socially acceptable moral standards of course. Criminal law is also the example of wide-scope duty-imposing law where a legal obligation that entails mandatory conduct or performance. In its complexity it has general guideline – that people know what is socially expectable and common knowledge. Goodin explains that the way to simplify the understanding of it is to incline toward writing purely positive-conventional morality rather than critical-normative morality into the law. In that way everyone in the community would have the most immediate relating access. Although it leaves up the question of the minority, as the common values would be reflected only from the bigger part of the society. Common law that is developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals could be quite complex to work through but in Goodin’s opinion are much more straightforward than statutory laws that are subordinate to the higher constitutional laws, that require great knowledge of the specific law and occasion. Although he is mostly against the idea of making laws bi-conditional he would make the difference in the topics that are seen as private matter. So example if the society in general is seeing homosexuality as not something normal, should we be making it against the law or instead protect