Hart: Law and Morals

A law is commonly defined as,"the collection of rules imposed by authority." While on the other hand morality is defined as, "concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct." As Josh stated in class Hart believes the law is a fact or how something is. Hart believes that morality is value or law as it ought to be. Hart also says,

"They certainly accepted many of the things that might be called

"the intersection of law and morals." First, they never denied that,as a matter of
historical fact, the development of legal systems had been powerfully influenced
by moral opinion,and, conversely, that moral standards had been profoundly
influenced by law, so that the content of many legal rules mirrored moral
rules or principles. It is not in fact always easy to trace this historical
causal connection,but Bentham was certainly ready to admit its existence;
so too Austin spoke of the "frequent coincidencers" of positive law and morality
and attributed the confusion of what law is with what law ought to be to this very fact."

When I think of law and morality I think of two different things that are also closly related. To me law has to do with the court and judges, but also with our legal system and things that have to do with that. Morality has to do with your conscience and wanting to do good and stay away from evil. I think that the legal system has been influenced by the idea behind morality because when you follow the laws you also have strong morals because you aren't doing anything wrong to cause you to have a guilty conscience. How Hart believes it to be is that the law is a fact or how something is and that morality is value or law as it ought to be. I agree with him because morality is based on values and also law ought to be like that because everyone should have good values. Law is also based on facts because the law is rules to follow so I agree with him on that as well.