Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Internal Morality of Law

Based on Fuller’s account of the internal or procedural aspects of morality pertaining to the law, I believe that it is possible to substantiate Fuller’s assertion that “when men are compelled to explain and justify their decisions, the effect will generally be to pull those decisions toward goodness.” Fuller’s view of the ameliorating effects of internal morality is provable in my opinion, because often times when even serious criminals are asked to explain why they committed a crime, they can often justify it with what according to them is a good reason. Also, when someone is forced to stop and think about the decision they are going to make, chances are they will make a better decision then they would if they went right into the action without first analyzing it. Some controversy and disagreement might result from Fuller’s views on internal and external morality, because many will argue that you cannot simply judge the effectiveness of a good legal system and separate it from a bad one based simply on the amount of coherence and order that it promotes among those subject to the law. In his book “The Morality of Law”, Fuller provides eight routes of failure for any legal system and for each of these routes he provides a corresponding principle on how to avoid such shortcomings and claims that these principles represent the “internal morality of law”. By adhering to these principles that Fuller wrote, he argues that it will lead to a just law and avoid unjust laws.

2 comments:

  1. i agree with you on that if a person was to stop and think about the actions they are about to commit, they would cease from performing any immoral or illegal activities. However, not everyone shares the same set of morals so when i hear about a gang member killing an innocent person just because they got in the way, i wonder what was that person thinking? How did they not come to the conclusion that this is just plain wrong? Certain people have certain morals and that is what convinces them to act the way they do.

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  2. I think there is some merit to the idea that stopping to think about an act diminishes hasty decisions, but some immoral crimes like premeditated murder or establishing a pyramid scheme require a great deal of forethought. It seems that reflection is important to Fuller's claim, but ultimately reflection can still result in pretty heinous crimes. In addition to reflection, Fuller also points out the need to explain one's decisions to others. In other words, one must not only reflect privately, but publicly. How or why would public reflection lead to better laws?

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