4.1 Truth?

More serious criminal offences are also considered immoral. For example, murder, assault, and theft are generally considered morally, as well as legally, wrong.

Box 7 Morality and law

In 1962, one of the most senior judges of England and Wales, Viscount Simonds, said that the purpose of the criminal law is to enforce morality:

The supreme and fundamental purpose of the law [is] to conserve not only the safety and order but also the moral welfare of the State … The law must be related to the changing standards of life, not yielding to every shifting impulse of the popular will but having regard to fundamental assessments of human values and the purposes of society.[2]

  • 1 Shaw v DPP [1962] AC 220, 267–8 (Viscount Simonds).

OpenLearn - Truth, myth or mixture?
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