Public Morality and Law

Abstract

We take for granted in our Western tradition a certain convergence between morals and law. Morality, in so far as it applies to our public lives, is assumed to follow legality. We believe that in normal social circumstances we can recognize the moral values of a nation in its law. We therefore reject any suggestion that there can be such things as amoral politics or unpolitical morality. We assert that the fundamental moral principle in politics ought to be the observance of our country's legal processes, since legal process ought to coincide with moral conviction. When this is not the case, we insist, when there is no assimilation into the political arena of the moral convictions behind our laws, then the laws themselves will lose respect and we shall have more Watergates and worse. In this article I propose to look more closely at this conviction that the legal standard is the moral standard for politics and government. I make three affirmations about law as a standard for public morality: first, it is a minimum standard; second, minimum though it is, law is nonetheless a necessary standard; third, because it is both minimum and necessary, law as a standard is incomplete.