Law vs. Ethics

From the Lunch & Learn Series: Educate Yourself During Your Lunch Break

Controversy abounds in the political moment in which we now live. That’s why its even more important to distinguish between what is ethical (the process of distinguishing right from wrong) and what is legal (the process of determining right or wrong based on a specific ethical system and then meteing out punishment).

An ethical action may not necessarily be legal, a legal action may not necessarily be ethical. For instance, in our patriarchal society we may say that “a woman who has left her children to go out drinking is bad.” This is our moral judgment against her. But as Jocelyn Pollock notes in her book on ethical decisionmaking, we can think of this moral judgment as the tip of a pyramid.

If forced to defend this moral judgment, we may turn to some norms or rules that we live by, such as “children should be looked after” or “one shouldn’t drink to excess”. These rules attempt to explain our moral judgement (a wo…