Paper 3.10 - Law and Morals (AO1 & AO3) Flashcards
(12 cards)
What is a moral? Are they subjective or objective?
A value that a society or an individual deems right or wrong. These are subjective and vary from culture to culture.
What kind of punishments are there for breaking morals?
There are informal punishments i.e. societal shaming.
What are laws?
A set of rules which must be followed by everyone in society, with formal punishments for offenders.
How do laws and morals evolve over time? When is the start date of laws and morals?
Morals change over time as society accepts/rejects ways of life. They have no clear start date, but increase in popularity over time.
Laws change over time through statutes and common law. They have clear start dates from an Act of Parliament or a case.
What is a society called when it has a diverse range of cultures and morals?
Pluralist.
Describe the overlap between law and morals.
Most things that are illegal are also immoral (eg murder), but there are examples of things being immoral but legal (eg cheating) or vice versa (eg mercy killings).
What is positivism? (one person, two cases)
Hart believed that morals and justice should be separate. The law should exist outside of morality; in Wilson, the judge ruled that it wasn’t the laws responsibility to involve itself in the private affairs of a husband and wife. Religion is included in this; the judge in Gillick decided religion should be separate from healthcare.
What is natural law? (one person, one case)
Devlin believed that law must protect moral values otherwise society would disintegrate. In Brown, there was a strong moral argument that harmful sexual activity should be illegal; it is immoral to hurt others for pleasure.
Fill in the blanks:
Judges are making _____ _______, in spite of the fact that they are criticised for being ___ __ _____. Their morals may not actively represent ______. There is a lack of _______ in _______ judges and this fails to represent the UK’s ________ society; there is a disconnect between the people and the power.
moral decisions, out of touch, society, diversity, superior, pluralist.
Fill in the blanks:
Politicians are encouraged to avoid passing _________ or _______ laws in order to keep voters on their side. As such, law is failing to keep up with the __________ ______ in society i.e. euthanasia. However, ________ are changing. The ________ ______ bill is in the House of Lords right now. One clauses of the bill allows doctors to ______ to participate; why are doctors’ morals relevant to their job as a medical practitioner?
controversial, divisive, changing morals, attitudes, Assisted Dying, refuse.
Fill in the blanks:
__________ is unrealistic; it is nearly impossible to keep ______ out of legal decisions. They shape new laws eg _____ _______. At the same time, morality moves ______ than the law; the law tends to be ________ rather than _________. This means that there could be moral _________ that the law has not yet caught up to.
Positivism, morals, drug driving, faster, reactive, proactive, injustices.
Fill in the blanks:
As long as the morals of the _________ are reflected by the law, there is no injustice. At the same time, the law should _______ society and the vulnerable. Even ______ said that there must be a limit as to how much the law can __________ with a person’s ________ ____.
majority, protect, Devlin, interfere, personal life.
