Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Morality in Law

We need morality to play a part in our laws but I feel that we need some flexibility. As we talked in class the Ten Commandments have become a guideline that a lot of our laws have derived from. We cannot just go from this we have to use interpretation and look at each case differently. I feel that in our society we do look at each crime on case by case bases because there are many factors that can lea d to a crime. If we follow these morals will we treat someone who kills somebody in self defense the same as someone who kills someone in rage? If we were to just follow the Ten Commandments then they are both guilty of the fifth commandment, You shall not kill. However, our society looks at these incidents differently and does not treat both of these incidents the same. Those who convict more heinous crimes deserve to have larger sentences and that’s what we do in most societies today. I disagree with those who feel that judges just go by the mandatory minimums and maximums because there are ways around that. Such as finding someone guilty of a lesser crime say 2nd murder instead of 1st degree murder. Finally, morality does play a role in our society and law today but I do feel like we are more flexible. Each judge treats a case differently, they may look at other cases that are similar to see what the sentencing is but they try to find the right sentence for that particular person. Our Constitution I feel allows this type of flexibility.

2 comments:

  1. I agree that the use of interpretation is important when it comes to our laws and that each case needs to be looked at differently. This is because no two cases are the same and a particular law can be applied differently to each case, or perhaps not at all.

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  2. I agree that interpretation of the law is very important because if you just used a concrete definition of law, then many people would be unjustly punished. The self defense issue you brought up is a great example of this, as they are clearly not guilty of the same thing as someone who plotted to go out and kill someone.

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