On 12/09/2007, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Who is trolling here ? Slavery was legal and immoral. My question was about things that were illegal.
The distinction is irrelevant, you can reverse it pretty easily: Since slavery was legal, rescuing someone else's slave and freeing them (a moral act) was illegal (it's theft, basically).
Hmmm! Just like taking someone's intellectual property and freeing it. ;-)
I'm not quite sure mainstream morals have shifted quite that far. ;)
Of course, morality is an entirely subjective concept. At the time, slavery was generally considered moral, since the people being enslaved were considered lesser beings. It was when those morals changed that people started to call for abolition. The law generally follows morals, but lags behind a little. During the gap between morals changing and the law catching up you can have immoral laws.
The law doesn't necessarily follow morality; it often reflects the self-interest of those in power.
Well, yes, I forgot to mention I was talking about in a Democracy. Generally, laws in a Democracy do follow morals - sometimes it requires waiting for the next election before the laws are updated, but it does happen eventually (assuming it's sufficiently important to people).