On Legislating Morality

Back in July, I posted an entry that I called "Two Separate Spheres of Life?"   In it I questioned the common separation of moral questions from political ones.  At the end of a more recent post, the last in my series on James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense, I commented on the ubiquity of morality.  By that I meant that we encourage habits and promote views of morality in one way or another even when we are not always aware that we are doing so.

Not long ago, I ran across a discussion related (but not identical) to these thoughts, "Why We Can't Help But Legislate Morality" by Micah Watson.   It is closest to the ideas in the former post, but it has the advantage of being briefer and clearer than both of my entries.

Prof. Watson focuses on law, not politics strictly speaking, but his main point basically concurs with mine back in July.   He observes, "... every law and regulation that is proposed, passed, and enforced has inherent in it some idea of the good that it seeks to promote or preserve.  Indeed, no governing authority can in any way be understood to be morally neutral. ... To legislate, then, is to legislate morality."

For some, Prof. Watson's perspective may be old hat; for others, it may help to crystallize a sneaking suspicion and make sense of heated policy debates.

His essay does not argue for a particular form of legislation.  Instead, it suggests that our often controversial conversations about various laws will be aided if we can do at least two things: (1) move beyond denying that legislation imposes a moral vision and (2) recognize that it in fact always does.

We will make more civil progress together, I take him to be intimating, if we can -- without excluding questions of operational efficiency, prospective success, and potential blowback -- focus on the moral aspects that a law reflects.  Conversations can then more squarely engage what the legislators seek to promote as a moral goal and the means proposed to accomplish it.