It is traditionally thought that the primary function of law is to regulate people’s behavior and, thus, to establish order within a community. Law and fear of punishment are supposed to prevent people from criminal activity. Therefore, law and law enforcement are essential components of any civil society. At the same time, morality can also perform the function of regulating people’s behavior. Besides, very often morality is named a predecessor to law since many laws were made on the basis of certain moral principles which the society thought necessary to follow. And even though morality does not presuppose any official punishment for misbehavior, it can also be as efficient as law because in our modern world social exclusion can be as terrible a punishment as imprisonment.
The term morality is usually associated with such concepts as goodness and badness. Traditionally, morality is understood to consist in certain principles that define which behavior can be viewed as right and which behavior should be viewed as wrong. Thus, these principles represent a code of conduct that people traditionally follow in order to be considered good and fit the community they belong to. The definition of the term morality given by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy specifies that morality, if described descriptively, can refer to “certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for his/her own behavior” (The definition of morality, 2016). This definition underlines the fact that the rules of behavior which are considered moral are usually established within a certain group or accepted by a certain individual. So, it is obvious that they can differ from one group to another. For example, some religions or communities allow men to have many wives whereas Christianity considers it both immoral and illegal. Another example could be discrimination of girls in the family. Thus, in China girls have traditionally been undesired children and have often been thought to deserve no attention at all since they can do nothing good for the family. As a result, many girls were abandoned in their infancy or even killed through abortion before they were born. Such principles are sure to be criticized in many civilized societies while in China they have long been considered moral. It is worth saying, though, that the situation in China has been changing for the better after the Chinese Civil War; however, China is still experiencing a great discrepancy in the sex ratio.
The term law, in its turn, is defined as “the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties” (Law, n.d.). It is obvious that there are a number of similarities in the definitions of the terms morality and law since both concepts comprise the rules which regulate people’s behavior. However, the definition to the term law presupposes that these rules are enforced on people while morality rules are the ones which people choose to follow themselves according to habits, customs, or traditions of their community. Besides, people’s refusal to follow the law entails penalties, such as fines or imprisonment, whereas their refusal to live in agreement with their community moral rules may entail only disapproval by other members of the community or, at the worst, social exclusion. Moreover, laws are always fixed in the written form, which makes it possible to refer to them easily in case of necessity and which makes them an easy means of control that no one can contradict.
The abovementioned comparison seems to prove that law can be viewed as a much more serious regulator of people’s behavior. However, it is not always so. Morality rules had existed before any law was made. They were the real basis of all laws written. In the past, morality and law were often considered to be one and the same thing. The things that were morally right were later fixed in laws to be followed. Therefore, it is said that ancient Greek writers stated that “the good person is the one who will do what is lawful” (Basic observations on law and morality, 2001). Lawful things were morally right ones. The reality has changed, though. At present, law is not always the same as morality. Laws are made by lawmakers who are often influenced by politicians or driven by their own personal needs. That is why more and more often morality and law are viewed as unrelated things. And unfortunately, more and more often people hear the phrase unjust laws, which are the laws that people consider to be morally wrong.
For the reason that morality and law no longer go hand in hand, the issue of professional ethics is a key one in the legal field. Lawyers, judges, policemen, etc. are the one who should enforce law in the society in order to make people living in this society feel safe and legally protected. The case is, though, that sometimes even law-abiding citizens feel more afraid of law enforcement than they feel protected by it. Newspapers abundantly write stories about injustice done to people by the police or in courts. Only recently, the USA was shocked by the police officers’ shooting an 18-year-old black man dead. The death of Paul O’Neal still remains a mystery. There is footage of the man being arrested and handcuffed; so, it is unclear why he actually got shot at his back by one of the police officers. The O’Neal family’s lawyer, Michael Oppenheimer, calls Paul O’Neal’s death a murder and says that in this young man’s case “the police officers decided to play judge, jury and executioner” (Davey and Pérez-Peña, 2016). Stories like this law and the power it gives can be used against citizens rather than for protecting them and maintaining order in the society.
Paul O’Neal’s case also attracts attention to another side of law enforcement – the issue of punishment and the morality of it. Even if we imagine that the police officers acted according to the law and the young man was shot because he tried to escape or attack the officers, there is still a question if it is moral to shoot another person. Is it morally right to imprison people or execute them for crimes committed? Punishment is definitely the point where morality and law rarely coincide. It is hard to imagine that anyone could call, for example, capital punishment a morally right thing. Probably, there is another word that can be used instead and this word is justice. Thus, something can be not morally right but just to do.
Justice presupposes that everyone is equal before the law. Everyone includes all people living in the community in question – ordinary citizens, government officials, politicians, policemen, etc. If a government official is accused of corruption, he/she must be punished. The same concerns policemen who exercise their power and, by doing so, may violate human rights. They all should be equal in courts. That will be justice in action. If everyone understood that they could not avoid justice, they might behave properly and morally right. Even though laws are supposed to exercise justice and help put it in practice, they are not always just and aimed at equality for everyone before the law. For example, in 2013 the UK’s House of Lords passed a bill that allowed so-called ‘secret court’ powers which could be used to “shield governmental wrongdoing from public and judicial scrutiny under conditions that are fair and just” (Robins, 2013). In other words, under this bill UK courts got the power to keep certain information in secret for the sake of “national security”. As a result, citizens could get a refusal without any explanation why. Thus, judges and those who controlled them got an opportunity to make decisions they needed and the public would never know the truth.
Thus, it is evident that there are many pitfalls in the legal field which must be successfully overcome by professionals who value the justice which law is supposed to promote. Generally, most laws are just, of course, and coincide with moral values of certain communities in which they were made. Therefore, the function of legal professionals is to put these laws into practice helping to maintain peace and safety of their community. In order to make the laws work right, legal professionals must remain impartial under any circumstances, even if their personal moral principles do not coincide with what the law says. Legal professionals cannot let themselves go against the law. They must be examples of law-obedience and symbols of order. Otherwise, common people will not follow the law, either, and start behaving in the way they think it necessary, even if it is against the law. Moreover, legal professionals should not act in their own personal interests and for their own benefit. They should not use their professional knowledge, experience, and contacts for their personal gain. If they do so, they will go against their professional ethics. And moreover, such a behavior will be a violation of basis moral principles – both personal and professional ones.
So, speaking about professional ethics of legal practitioners, one cannot avoid considering such basic concepts as law, morality, and justice. Law is supposed to be used to exercise justice. No one would argue that a just society is an ideal society. Thus, every society must aim at making just laws and follow them. Morality which represents the rules of behavior accepted in a certain community must be the basis for such laws. If it is, no one in that community will disagree with the fairness of such laws or blame legal professionals for being unjust. Morality and law must go hand in hand. Unfortunately, that slogan is hard to put into reality. More and more often morality is forgotten and laws are used in political games. There are examples of unjust laws, corruption, and abuse of power. Shamefully, it is usually the result of legal practitioners not following their professional ethics. Such disregard of law by legal practitioners themselves can be an indicator of a decrease in morality of the society as a whole.
References
Basic observations on law and morality. (2001, September 10). Western Kentucky University. Retrieved from http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/320/320lawmo.htm
Davey, M., and Pérez-Peña, R. (2016, Aug. 5). Chicago releases videos from police officers’ killing of 18-year-old. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/us/chicago-releases-video-from-police-officers-killing-of-18-year-old.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPolice%20Brutality%20and%20Misconduct&_r=0
Law. (n.d.). Oxford Dictionaries: Language Matters. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/law
Robins, J. (2013, July). Injustice in court. Red Pepper. Retrieved from http://www.redpepper.org.uk/injustice-in-court/
The definition of morality. (2016, February 8). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
