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.