Blog #2: Ethics and Law

I am in agreement of the importance of ethics and its study. I would like to further argue that in the case of law being not sufficient, if it was simply enough for society to rule based entirely on law, we would not need to have lawyers, juries, or judges. Each position holds an important part in the courtroom.  Lawyers are used to invoke moral attitudes of the defendant to the jury. They are also meant to question the integrity of witnesses – sometimes attacking their moral reasoning. Juries are meant to decide the judgment of the defender, often influenced by their own ethical judgment – despite the objective direction from the judge. The judges themselves are meant to give judgment of defenders that they deem ethically fit. Even laws themselves are based solely in ethics.

Each precedent that has come to pass, such as Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, as well as many others; there were laws set previous to them that held the jury and judge to make a moral decision, thinking ethically and not about the law.  They found that the law against black children being able to attend a segregated public school was morally wrong. They found that being unaware of the crime you are arrested for and being coerced into a confession is unethical. It is because of the ethical lens that prevailed during these cases that eventually the law changed. The use of ethics sought to create a new attuned law that accepted their new definitions.

To further continue the point that “we can always raise the question of whether that law itself is right or not”.  Consider the Jim Crow laws. They themselves were immoral, but they lasted for 70 some years. By going merely off the law, ignoring ethics in general, we would still be in the Jim Crow era, still believing in segregation.