THE RELATION OF LAW TO MORALITY

Morality comes to mind easily in any discussion of non-legal sources of social

control. This is because it is pervasive and quite often it openly competes with
law. It is a yardstick by which many judge the validity of law and whether to obey
it or not. In other words, morality is raised to the level of a superior law, which
law must reflect or it will be deemed invalid.
Morality has to do with notions of tightness or wrongness. What is described as
right or wrong may vary from place to place and from time to time. The yardstick
of determining whether a particular thing is right or wrong also varies. But every
society definitely has principles of right and wrong behaviour. The way a person
lives his whole life may be described as moral (e.g. upright, virtuous, with
integrity) or immoral (e.g. dishonest, sexually loose, living in sin). The concept of
morality is therefore a very wide one, associated with diverse things.
For our purposes, it suffices to state that whenever we try to judge any action in
terms of whether it is right or wrong we are in the domain of morality. It
presupposes the existence of a higher value by which we judge actions and other
values, including the law. Law as a rule of conduct embodies values. Usually these
are moral values, but they need not necessarily be so.
Most (not all) of the time, what is morally right would also be legally
right and what is morally wrong would be legally wrong. But the content
and dictates of the two need not always coincide. Some things that are legal may
be judged to be morally wrong, or some things that are illegal may be morally
right. For example, the law may accept homosexuality between consenting adults,
but such acts stand morally condemned. It is important to note that the ideas of
law and morality are at all times influenced by power.
Law tends to be more precise in it definitions and her ingredient that must be
present before particular crime is complete. Morality on the other hand tends to
be more loose or generalised in its use of terms.
For example, under morality, rape is committed whenever a man has sex with a
woman without her consent. For law on the other hand, a boy below 12 years
cannot commit rape even if he achieves erection, penetration and ejaculation
because he is not yet of the age of legal responsibility. A husband or a lunatic may
also not be able to commit rape in law even if all the other elements that will
make the action a rape under morality exist.
Convergence of Law and Morals
i. An obvious similarity between law and moral is that both prescribe and
proscribe conducts, and in doing this, there is great concurrence on which
conduct to prescribe and proscribe. The preponderant majority of acts that
morality will condemn are also condemned and made illegal by law. When
 moral and legal codes concide, there is greater certainty of obedience from
citizens and of enforcement by legal officials.
ii. Law and moral will also tend to supplement and reinforce each other.
Furthermore, it becomes a moral duty to obey the law.
iii. Law and morality both impose standards of conduct necessary for social
order. In doing so the rules that they lay down are expressed in similar
language of obligations and duties, rights and wrongs.
These similarities should not seduce us to start thinking that law necessarily
connotes moral obligation or that moral obligations are always translated into
law.

Divergence of Law and Morals

i. A major difference between law and morals comes from their definitions of
condemned acts. Morality does not attach the many qualifications that law will
attach before one that is accused will be adjudged guilty. For example, S.314 of
the criminal code of southern Nigeria States that "A person is not deemed to
have killed another, if the death of that other person does not take place within a
year and, a day of the cause of death".
ii. Secondly, the law does not punish omission to act except where there, is a
legal duty to act.
For example
watching an old woman die in a burning house without doing anything to help,
had not committed any offence legally, though their action was morally
disgraceful.
somebody who could swim, watches a child drown when he could have saved
the child at no risk to himself. So refusal to help is not illegal but - it is immoral.
a man who refuses to give back a borrowed knife to its owner because he
(borrower) honestly believes the owner will commit a crime with the knife is
morally right but legally wrong.
A third area of divergence is the area in which the law may deliberately refrain
from supporting the moral rule because the machinery of enforcing such may be
cumbersome or may create more problems than it will solve
A good example is the are of sexual immorality. There are so many aspects of
sexual relationship which morality frowns upon but to which the law will not
attach legal sanctions.
The law in many western countries now allows abortion, homosexuality and
various forms of adulterous relationships. In those countries, these acts still
stand morally condemned. Another
example of this is prostitution. This age old activity is typically between
consenting parties and there is usually no complainant. To insist that the law
must punish prostitution is to seek to enforce public notions of morality on
individuals. Furthermore, since it is secretive and there is no aggrieved party,
detection is very difficult. In Nigeria, prostitution is not a crime perse, but
soliciting for it, or making a living from it (like pimps) constitute a crime
Other examples are contraception/family planning, abortion, intoxication (in
the north), homosexuality, smoking in public and so on.
iv. Finally, law and moral may sometimes diverge so much, that morality may
require a disobedience of law! For example if a legislation is made to legalise
drug taking, or stealing or some other vices, morality will require that such laws
be disobeyed. Even in the military where the norm is "obey before complain", a
subordinate is morally right when be disobeys an immoral order.

THE RELATION OF LAW TO CUSTOM

Custom is another major and obvious non-legal source of social control. It exists
side by side with law in most societies of the world. Not only does it supplement
law in the process of social control , it is infact a major source of law. This is
especially so in common law countries (countries modelled after the English
legal system where customs and judicial precedent is a major source of law,
Nigeria inclusive. Socialist countries however frown upon the use of custom,
understandably because it would reflect the values of a discredited era.
In definition, both law and custom are rules of conduct which members of
society recognise and consider obligatory to observe. The differences come, when
we start specifying the nature of the rules, how they are made, how they are
enforced, who enforces them, and so on. Cuxtom is the habits or practices of a
people, that have been observed over a period and which are seen to be useful for
the corporate well being of the society that crystallizes into the custom of such a
people. The habit and practices, in other words, become not just what ought to
be done, but what must be done. They become obligatory and sanctions are
attached for non-observance.
i. A major difference between law and custom is that custom is unwritten, and
lack centralized state organs to enact, enforce or interpret it. Laws are written
and have the whole legal machinery made up of legislatures, police, courts,
prisons and others to give effect to it.
ii. Custom had no state police to enforce its rules, International law lacks a
standby iii. First is that custom lacks the substantive features of law. There are
no written codes to define offences and stipulate penalties.
iv. while there is usually a centralised government /state in whose name laws are
made, this is not the case with custom. Infact you may not even know when
precisely customs are made, talkless of in whose name.
Logically flowing from the absence of a centralised government is the fact that
there are typically no centralised organs for creating, enforcing and
administering custom. Such organs must necessarily be built around law in a
developed legal system.
iv. The lack of centralized organs of enforcement and administration of
custom also translates into a lack of records.
v. Finally, law as been described as having a certain autonomy of its own and
reflecting the subtleties and sophistication of legal professionalism.
Custom on the other hand is described the approach of the layman, shaped
by exigencies of day to day transactions among people and lacking in
sophistication.
On the whole however, law will reflect custom, prescribing what custom
prescribes and proscribing whatever custom proscribes.
REVIEW QUESTION
Critically discuss the relation of law to moral,custom,force using
Nigerian examples. Write a maximum of five type written

THE RELATION OF LAW TO FORCE

Force is another concept which has close association with law. For any definition
of law to be complete, it must contain an aspect about what happens to violators
of the law. This is what is contemplated when we talk about force. It entails the
whole machinery of the state, organised legitimately and entrusted with the
authority of enforcing the law.
Ordinarily, we understand force to mean the power or ability to enforce one's
will. It is the power to make people act in conformity with one's demands,
regardless of those other people's wishes. The force that we associate with law is
the force which is characterised by the twin elements of legitimacy and authority,
it implies that there is a state with a legitimate or quasi-legitimate government in
place.
That the state has law enforcement and administration agencies. That there are
laws governing the operation of the agencies. And in short, that the personell of
the agencies wield legitimate authority. The citizens believe in and recognise the
legitimacy of the agencies and so feel a sense of duty in complying with the
orders of the agents and not out of fear of force alone.
Convergence of Law and Force
In the practical sense, it is inconceivable that we can have law that is not
supported by force. Take the element of force away and what you have left
cannot be law. This however must not be interpreted to mean that law can rest
on force alone.
 In other words, the major compelling reason why people obey the law is the fear
of sanctions for doing otherwise, though this is not always obvious.
Divergence of Law and Force
Interestingly, arguments have also been advanced to the effect that force need
not be a component of law, or that it is even an anathema to law.
It has been argued that any force or violence is wrong in itself. Therefore, any law
which rests upon violence offends the principles of true morality. This second
view is however convoluted and not very clear.