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19 S. Ill. U. L. J. 447 (1994-1995)
Law, Morals, and Ethics

handle is hein.journals/siulj19 and id is 477 raw text is: LAW, MORALS, AND Emics Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr.* INTRODUCTION These days the normative coherence and integrity of the law is open to searching criticism from various directions. This is true of all bodies of law-constitutional law, contract law, tort law, and the law governing the professions such as our own. Any intelligible criticism of law requires a normative framework of its own. That is, normative criticism requires some set of normative concepts in terms of which to carry the discussion forward. Many critics are content to use general epithets such as unjust, exploitive, or inefficient. Others project more sustained critical analyses. Whether general or specific, however, critical analysis must have a place of beginning. It is possible to criticize law in terms of law itself. However, criticism in these terms reduces to a claim that the law is internally inconsistent in some respect. The law is internally inconsistent, indeed shot through with inconsistencies. Yet, serious criticism aims to go deeper and to say that the law in some particular is wrongheaded or simply wrong. At this stage, the ensuing question is: Compared to what? It seems to me that the comparison must be to norms we experience as either morals or ethics, or some combination of morals and ethics. I shall define these terms in a moment. However, initially I mean to make four points: First, criticism of law must be in terms of morals or ethics simply because, at least as I will define these concepts, there are no other intelligible normative systems in terms of which criticism could be conducted. Second, and in an opposite direction, the nature of morals and ethics as normative systems severely limits the coherence of legal criticism that can be conducted in these terms. I do not suggest that law therefore is beyond criticism. I do suggest, however, that law cannot be criticized in terms that are as formal and universal as law itself. As I will attempt to suggest, morals and ethics are delimited by boundaries concerning their scope and force that do not have counterparts in a legal system. Correlatively, a legal system is constrained by its own boundaries, chiefly relating to the problem of objective proof, that are absent in morals and ethics. These constraints explain why so much contemporary Trustee Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania. I am indebted to Professor Susan Koniak for many helpful suggestions.

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