I strongly disagree. I think that laws should be enforced 100%. If we (the society) wouldn't like that, it means that our laws suck, and need to be changed.
A law should either be enforced close to 100% of the time (with exceptions at the discretion of a court), or 0% of the time (ie. the law should not exist).
If jay walking, pot smoking, or anti-sodemy laws are not really enforced, to me that's a sign that they should be taken off the books. In an over-legislated society, we should focus on having strong core legislations that everyone agrees with.
Crimes like murder and rape, on the other hand, should be enforced as close to 100% of the time as possible.
Because enforcing the law is the basis of a functioning society? If citizens don't like the laws, it's in their power to change that (assuming of course a functioning democracy where elected officials are not just vessels for corporate & wealthy people's will).
Promoting the non-enforcement of the law is both immoral and erodes the foundations of a civilized society.
In a society where an effort is made that the law will impose on others as little as possible there would inevitably be people who misbehave by imposing on others - physically hurting people or stealing from them for example. People who impose on others in this manner should still be punished, or maybe exiled.
But there are a lot of people in jail who have not hurt anyone else, for crimes like drug possession. In the comment you responded to I gave other examples where a majority imposes on others with dubious justification.
Look at how fickle U.S. politics is, with our federal-tribal-leaders now expressing the will of a new 51% majority that changes every couple of terms, increasingly treating the constitution as something to work around. It seems that there are way too many people/groups who would be happy to force everyone to their way of thinking, worldwide, and that leaves lots of room for abuse and corruption.
I suppose there's not much that can be done if most people think that's ok.
>"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.
That doesn't mean it's a good thing. Good laws (especially criminal laws) should be normative, i.e. it should be deducible for anyone which behavior is punishable. Laws not adhering to this principle are ripe for selective enforcement and have no place in a rule-of-law society.
Statutes are a lagging (not leading) indicator of consensus about acceptable behavior. Law is evidence to help establish that society, at least at what time, found a certain behavior unacceptable. It also has to be willing to enforce it rigorously and consistently today.
It's good hygeine to repeal or amend laws that we aren't willing to enforce, but it doesn't always happen. If it does happen, it's almost always after, not before, doing what the law prohibits becomes widespread and socially acceptable.
It might be morally necessary to abstain from behaviors your community finds unacceptable. It might also be morally necessary for the executive branch to enforce the laws exactly as written, no matter how poorly they track moral consensus, until the laws are changed.
It doesn't follow that it's morally obligatory to follow the law just because it's the law.
Yes, actually; enforcing all of the laws all of the time is completely impractical. If you want always-on enforcement of every law, then we're going to have to seriously reform all of the laws. So, WRT your comment, I would tell you that it is my preference that laws be enforced to solve a specific social problem, not merely for the sake of enforcing a law.
Your views are colored by the laws you have dealt with, as are mine. Just because that is the law near you doesn't automatically mean that is the ideal way of regulating society. It is just what you are used to.
Right. When we talk about laws not getting enforced leading to people doing bad things, we're talking about you. You seem alright with that, which I've already noted.
I agree vehemently. In my opinion, laws should be followed, and perfectly enforced. If that makes you feel uneasy, and if the majority of the population feels the same way, the law should be removed.
Perfect enforcement would rapidly reduce the number of stupid and nonsensical laws on the books, that only exist so that the police can jail people after they have done something wrong/after they were targeted by the police or another influential person.
And I think that is a good conversation to have. If the law is not worth enforcing, it is not worth having. Laws are meant to remove one's freedoms. Sometimes that loss is meant to protect others, but it is still the government telling its citizens they are not allowed to do something. People should have as few goverment imposed restrictions as necessary to have a functioning society.
Imagine what would happen if everyone started selectively obeying the laws that are compatible with their beliefs.
Normal people and police do this every single day with usually little ill effect. Police are not obligated to pursue every instance of a violation they see, a person is in theory obligated to follow every applicable law, but in practice, they do not (and the sheer volume of law ensures that it's impossible anyways), and the world hasn't come crashing down.
The idea that ignoring wrong or inconvenient laws leads to social collapse rings quite hollow, in light of that.
If we treat all laws as equal because they are the law, then a person who drives over the speed limit has logically done just as bad as someone who kills another.
Can we agree that this suggestion is absurd on its face?
If we instead acknowledge that some laws are more important than others, the more difficult question has to be asked "what defines that importance?", which logically means that there are some laws that are not that important at all, who's violation has little to no negative societal impact. Like going a mile over the speed limit.
Or more to the point of this discussion, like downloading a movie from your favorite torrent site.
If morals drive laws and not the other way around, the moral consensus seems to be shifting towards the fact that copyright infringement is morally neutral, or at least not that bad, on the same level as going a mile over the speed limit. It's technically illegal, you could be made an example out of if someone really wants to, but the chances of that happening are all but nonexistent.
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