# Essay Plan: To what extent is the law always moral and just?
Introduction
This essay plan will explore the relationship between law, morality, and justice. To begin, it is necessary to define what we mean by ‘moral’ and ‘just’. Morality can be understood as the set of principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour held by an individual or a society. Justice, on its part, is a concept based on fairness, equality, and righteousness; it can be seen as having two parts: procedural justice, which is about the fairness of the processes used to make legal decisions, and substantive justice, which concerns the fairness of the outcomes themselves. The function of laws in a civilised society is multi-faceted. Fundamentally, laws exist to maintain public order, to provide a framework for resolving disputes peacefully, and to protect the rights and liberties of citizens. In essence, as some legal theorists have argued, law provides the basic “social cohesion” necessary for society to function. However, the question of whether this functional legal framework is, or even should be, a direct reflection of a society’s moral and just principles is a point of significant debate. This plan will argue that while the law often strives to be both moral and just, it frequently falls short of these ideals due to inherent conflicts between legal certainty, societal pluralism, and the complexities of human ethics.
Paragraph 1: ‘The law is always moral’
The proposition that ‘the law is always moral’ is a difficult one to sustain. While many laws are based on a widely shared moral consensus – for example, laws against murder or theft – there are numerous instances where the law must operate in a moral grey area or where its decisions conflict with the deeply held beliefs of a significant portion of the population. The courts are often forced to make decisions that, while legally sound, are morally agonising. This demonstrates that the law is not always a clear reflection of morality, but rather a mechanism for resolving situations where moral principles clash.
The case of *Airedale NHS Trust v Bland* (1993) is a powerful example of this. The House of Lords had to decide whether it was lawful for doctors to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from Anthony Bland, a young man left in a persistent vegetative state after the Hillsborough disaster. From a moral standpoint, this was a profound dilemma. On one hand, there is the principle of the sanctity of life, which suggests that life should be preserved at all costs. On the other hand, there are arguments about quality of life, dignity, and the futility of treatment. The court’s decision, that it was lawful to withdraw treatment, was based on a fine legal distinction between an act (actively ending a life, which remains unlawful as murder) and an omission (ceasing to provide treatment that is not in the patient’s best interests). For many, this legal distinction feels morally artificial. It can be said that the law did not provide a perfect moral answer, but instead a pragmatic legal solution to an impossible ethical problem.
Similarly, in *Re A (conjoined twins)* (2000), the Court of Appeal faced a decision with immense moral implications. The case concerned twins, Jodie and Mary, who were joined at the pelvis. The medical evidence was that without an operation to separate them, both would die within months. However, the operation would inevitably lead to the immediate death of Mary, the weaker twin, in order to save Jodie. The parents, devout Roman Catholics, refused to consent to the operation on the moral grounds that it would be actively killing one of their children to save the other. The court, however, authorised the operation. Lord Justice Brooke in his judgment explicitly weighed the competing moral arguments, ultimately concluding that the operation was lawful by, in effect, treating it as analogous to self-defence and applying the doctrine of necessity. He acknowledged that he was choosing the “lesser of two evils”. Here, the law did not reflect a simple moral rule; instead, it actively chose one life over another, a decision that directly contradicts the fundamental moral prohibition against killing an innocent person. The case shows that far from always being moral, the law is sometimes forced to make a choice between two deeply immoral outcomes. The conflict here is between the absolute moral principle of not killing and the consequentialist view of saving the life that could be saved. The law cannot always be perfectly moral because it has to provide a final, practical answer, even when morality itself is divided or offers no clear path.
Paragraph 2: ‘The law is always just’
Just as the law is not always moral, it is also not always just. One of the primary aims of law is to provide certainty and predictability, allowing individuals and businesses to organise their affairs with confidence in the legal rules. To achieve this, judges often apply the law according to strict rules of interpretation. However, this commitment to legal certainty can sometimes lead to outcomes that most people would consider unfair or unjust. The pursuit of procedural justice—applying the rules correctly—can sometimes undermine the achievement of substantive justice, or a fair result.
The classic case of *London & North Eastern Railway Co. v Berriman* (1946) illustrates this point perfectly. A railway worker was killed whilst carrying out routine maintenance—oiling points along the line. His wife attempted to claim compensation under a statute designed to protect railway workers by requiring a look-out to be provided for men working on or near the railway line for the purposes of “relaying or repairing” it. The House of Lords, applying the literal rule of statutory interpretation, held that oiling the line did not fall under the definition of “relaying or repairing”. It was merely maintenance. As a result, Mrs Berriman’s claim for compensation failed. From a legal perspective, the decision was correct; the court applied the statute’s words as written by Parliament. This upholds the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and provides clear, predictable law. However, from the perspective of substantive justice, the result was harsh and widely seen as unfair. The worker was exposed to the exact danger the statute was intended to prevent, but his widow was denied compensation due to a narrow, technical reading of the words. This case shows why laws might not always be just: the mechanisms designed to ensure consistency and certainty can be too rigid to accommodate the specific, equitable demands of an individual case.
Laws may also be unjust for other reasons. They may reflect historical prejudices that are no longer acceptable, or the high cost of legal action may mean that justice is not equally accessible to all. The purpose of strict rules, as seen in *Berriman*, is to prevent judges from making decisions based on their own subjective ideas of what is ‘fair’, which could lead to chaos and uncertainty. The aim is a system of laws, not of men. Yet the result is that the law’s claim to be ‘just’ is sometimes compromised in the name of consistency.
Paragraph 3: The Purpose and Aims of Law in a Civil Society
Given the examples above, I do not think the law is always moral and just. The more important question, then, is should it be, and who decides? In an ideal world, the law would perfectly align with both morality and justice. However, in a complex and pluralistic society such as the United Kingdom, where different communities and individuals hold diverse and often conflicting moral views, this is an impossible standard. Whose morality should the law reflect? A majority view? Or a set of objective moral truths?
The decision-making power in the UK legal system is split. Parliament is the supreme law-making body, and in theory it reflects the democratic will of the people, which may include a majority’s moral stance. Judges, on the other hand, are not elected and their role is to interpret and apply that law. However, in ‘hard cases’ like *Re A* and *Bland*, judges are inevitably drawn into making decisions with a strong moral dimension, acting as arbiters in situations where Parliament has not provided a clear answer. They are deciding who lives and who dies, based on legal principles and precedent. This judicial power is a constant point of debate.
Ultimately, the purpose of having laws is not necessarily to enforce a single, uniform moral code. Rather, it is to create the preconditions for a stable and functioning civil society where different moral viewpoints can coexist without descending into conflict. What I mean by this is that the law should reflect a fundamental, primary morality that is necessary for any society to operate. This includes minimally-required values such as the protection of life, respect for property, and tolerance, as enshrined in acts like the Equality Act 2010. These are less about a particular moral stance on a contentious issue, and more about the basic rules of engagement needed for a pluralistic society to sustain itself. The aim of the law, therefore, should be to provide a just framework—one that is applied consistently and fairly (procedural justice)—that allows for personal and community-based moralities to flourish, while intervening only when necessary to resolve disputes and protect fundamental rights.
Conclusion
In summary, the relationship between law, morality, and justice is not one of simple alignment. The law is not always moral, nor is it always just. Cases like *Re A (conjoined twins)* and *Airedale NHS Trust v Bland* reveal the profound moral difficulties the courts face, where legal principles are used to navigate ethical dilemmas that have no straightforward moral solution. In these situations, the law’s role is to provide a decisive resolution rather than a perfect moral answer. By contrast, cases like *London & North Eastern Railway Co. v Berriman* demonstrate how the law’s pursuit of certainty and procedural justice can sometimes produce results that appear substantively unjust.
The law must constantly balance competing aims. It seeks to reflect broad societal values, but it cannot enforce one specific morality in a diverse nation. It strives for justice, but this is often tempered by the need for predictability and consistency. Other factors also influence the law, including public policy, economic pressures, and the influence of international standards such as the European Convention on Human Rights, which itself provides a moral and legal baseline for the protection of individuals. Therefore, to claim the law is ‘always’ moral and just is to misunderstand its fundamental nature. The law is a pragmatic and evolving human institution, which should certainly aspire to morality and justice, but its primary function is to provide a stable and orderly framework within which society can function, even when faced with irresolvable moral disagreement and the imperfections of its own rules.
References
- Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993] AC 789 (HL)
- London & North Eastern Railway Co. v Berriman [1946] AC 278 (HL)
- Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] Fam 147 (CA)
