Hey, Dude! You're Like, Bogusly Forcing Your Morality on Me!
Well, as Eugene Volokh notes, that is what law does:
"But most of the coercive laws that we hotly debate involve the forcing of a majority’s views on the minority. That’s true of laws protecting endangered species, antislavery laws, antidiscrimination laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental laws, intellectual property laws — or for that matter bans on infanticide, child sexual abuse, or more generally murder, rape, or theft. Some of these laws may be sound on the merits, and others unsound. But the fact that they force one group’s views on another doesn’t make them wrong."
"But most of the coercive laws that we hotly debate involve the forcing of a majority’s views on the minority. That’s true of laws protecting endangered species, antislavery laws, antidiscrimination laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental laws, intellectual property laws — or for that matter bans on infanticide, child sexual abuse, or more generally murder, rape, or theft. Some of these laws may be sound on the merits, and others unsound. But the fact that they force one group’s views on another doesn’t make them wrong."
"But most of the coercive laws that we hotly debate involve the forcing of a majority’s views on the minority."
ReplyDeleteWhich of course begs the question: a majority of who?
I assume you are using this in the sense of "raises the question," but why? Volokh is not discussing what is the proper way to decide who gets to decide the laws; he is discussing the nature of law itself. What the deciding body is, is a separate question.
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