Legal Evil?

An ancient prophet, reputed for much wisdom, observed with some seeming discouragement: “…of making many books there is no end.”14 We would paraphrase the utterance with equal truth and with much more consternation, to observe that, likewise, of the making of many laws there is no end. It is common to our time, as also in other times, that there is much reliance upon the technicalities of law, sometimes with the erroneous assumption that everything that is legal or licensed is necessarily moral or ethical. But with our endless making of many laws, with our innumerable legal conflicts and contradictions, there are many acts of expediency and convenience which may have little or nothing to do with morality of ethics. For example, many nations and peoples, many legal agencies, past and present, have seen fit for one cause of another to regulate some forms of vice, rather than to prohibit them. Then, having taxed or licensed the vice in question and having found it to be a profitable source of revenue, there is always present the temptation to broaden the base of evil, that it may produce yet more revenue. But vice which is profitable is still vice—no matter to whom it is profitable, and no matter how the profits are used. Profit does not change the nature of evil. Nor does an inherently dishonest act, done “within the law” thereby become inherently honest. Nor does legal license change the basic character of a moral offense. For example, if in principle gambling were demonstrated to be in itself an evil, then it would cease to be an evil, then it would not cease to be an evil merely because it had somewhere somehow become licensed, or become sponsored and conducted by an otherwise respectable authority. And so we might make a long list of practices, some are more grievous than others, the real moral nature of which is not changed by their becoming legal or licensed. And no man is justified in whitewashing his conscience by telling himself that something basically wrong, but legally tolerated, is morally permissible. There are some principles operative, both in this world and beyond it, which are accompanied by a certainty of consequences which are quite beyond legal loopholes and concerning which no decision can be influenced, which no legislative body can amend or revoke, before which the shrewdest legal dexterity is helpless, with respect to which no jury can be confused or persuaded, and from which there is no appeal—and one such certainty is that a man cannot escape himself. Seemingly, there are many ways of avoiding friction with the law, complex and confusing though it may be—but there is no way of avoiding the moral consequences of a dishonest, unethical, or immoral act.