The founding principle of any legal system - in this nation and worldwide - is the basic human sense

of morality; that it is wrong to cause death, wrong to steal, wrong to bring suffering onto any other
member of the human race. However there is nevertheless a dividing line that separates those societal
rules of human decency and politeness from the statal rules that conglomerate into substantive justice.
So, the question is, what is it that separates the two? The punishment? The losses caused? There is
unequivocally some foundation to the division. The next thing this essay will address is how legal and
moral rules interact, how changes in the country’s united moral code beget similar changes in the law
and vice versa, via reference to examples of controversy in morality and law, such as gay marriage and
smoking bans.
However, I will start this paper with an outline on the fundamental and further evident separations
of law and morality by asking what makes something a legal rule? The obvious answer stems from its
maker. A legal rule can be characterised as one created by A: parliament or B: the judiciary - in other
words - the sovereign power. This is further shown by how they change, legal rules are made the
moment judges decide them, and parliamentary, through years of procedure and labour over a bill
becoming an act.
Legal rules are also shown separately by the punishments issued to those who commit them -
punishments like jail time, fines, paying damages, they are all punishments enforced, again, by the law.
Moral rules are not such a complicated phenomenon, they are founded by society, and enforced by
the same, with no legal punishment placed upon them. But, they nevertheless have an effect on the legal
world, as the latter makes its own endeavours to A: reflect the morality of the nation, and B: (in some
circumstances) have an effect on it. A is demonstrated by examples ranging as far as ‘killing is wrong’ to
the granting of votes for women, while B is demonstrated by examples such as the legalisation of
homosexuality, a decision that aimed to ease the nation into toleration, as it were.
This leads us onto the question of - as the Law may beget changes in morality and vice versa - which
of these is ‘supreme’? The obvious answer is the Law, being some enforceable set of values punishable by
the state, while the rules of morality fail to yield such a tangible (so to speak) result, but the effect ethics
has on English law is so profound, it’s arguable that morality is the more powerful of the two - this is the
concept of natural law, where there are supreme rules above humanity that the law ought to coincide
with, this could be the word of God (Aquinas), an international declaration (e.g. the ECHR) or, in this
case, a societal and unilateral sense of morality which the law feels it ought to correspond with.
Natural Law stipulates that justice is subject to a higher authority, and in practice, this is an effective
system, the values of the law maintain to protect the values of society, people’s liberty and freedom, and
do their level best to keep the nation satisfied overall
The concept meets its share of criticisms, however, Jeremy Bentham, a notable figure in philosophy
and law in the UK described the theory as "nonsense upon stilts," and maintained that the only
meaningful law was the one posed by the judges and parliament, and the only role morality had to play
in it was the people's own decisions as to whether or not to follow it. Furthermore, JS Mill, something of
a successor to Bentham, argued that while the law should aim to be moral, there is no hard set of rules to
guide it, he was an advocate of the 'Harm principle,' that a person may do whatever they choose to do, so
long as it does not cause harm to anybody else, still a founding idea in law and justice.
The idea of society's moral values determining the function of the law was the central point in the
Hart-Devlin debate, which set out to either legalise or keep homosexuality criminalised in the aftermath
of the Wolfenden report. The argument queried as to whether the law was an effective tool in enforcing
morality, and whether it could reflect the people's morality. Devlin argued that the law was the ultimate
factor in enforcing people's attitudes and moralities, while Hart stipulated that while the values of the
nation proved that the country wasn't ready for homosexuality, it could be used as an important and
powerful factor in changing their attitudes. The argument was a leading factor in the eventual
legalisation of homosexual relations and remains an important debate to this day.
In conclusion, despite the importance of morality in deciding the law, it in itself has a responsibility
to change the attitudes of the people that follow it. It remains one of the most important factors in
affecting people's morality, and is the only thing powerful enough to take up that responsibility. And
lastly, while it is very much subject to its own people's ethical fundamentals, it is, utterly and
unequivocally, the steel fist that we, as subjects of the law, can trust and rely on to see our standpoints
set firmly in stone.