Moral Rights and the Law

[YankeyMCC]

This is from the blog called "Atheist Ethicist" - this particular post was spured by the recent SCOTUS ruling about that Gitmo poisoners. However, it also touches on the Iranian holding of British Sailors and I think could be applied to the immigration debates as well since so many people seem so focused on "they are breaking the law" meme in that debate.

The Right to a Speedy Trial

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I argued in a previous post, “The Ten Amendments”, that the Bill of Rights represent moral principles thought to be true even if they were not written into the Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not create a right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, a right against unreasonable searches and seizures, or a right to a speedy trial. Rather, these rights already existed in nature. With the Bill of Rights, the founding fathers said, “This government promises to institute just law by respecting natural human rights; and acknowledge that any laws passed that violate these rights are unjust laws.”

The question to ask here is, “Would it be wrong for the government to do X if the Constitution did not prohibit it?”

Assume that there was no First Amendment. Would it then be moral for the government to punish people who wrote things that the President did not like? Or is it the case that Presidents would still be morally obligated to protect even those who say harsh things about him from physical harm, including harms inflicted by the government?
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Anybody who argues that morality is grounded in the law would have to conclude that anywhere slavery is legal, it is also moral – that nobody does anything wrong if they own a slave in a society where it is legally permissible to own slaves. Slavery does not become wrong unless and until slavery becomes illegal.
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In spite of this relationship between law and morality, it is interesting to note that whenever the Bush Administration gets into trouble over secret prisons, warrantless searches and seizures, secret trials based on secret evidence, and the like, they always answer by saying, “We did nothing illegal.”

Well, the slave owners in the antebellum South did nothing illegal either.
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Much more at: http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2007/04/right-to-speedy-trial.html