Aims of Law

Aims of Law

Laws prohibiting gay marriage:

Mill believed that imposition of legal restric­tions in speech and conduct are needed in the interest of conservation of good values in society. Mill is opposed to permitting any conduct which harms others. The concept of harm to others however does not imply that we must not care about others and the way that they treat themselves

The legal controversy surrounding the marriages between members of the same sex have many connotations and are complicated. Before 1996 the Federal Government had not attempted to establish its own definition of marriage and any marriage recognized by a state was recognized by the Federal Government. With the passage of the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 marriage was defined as the union of one man and one woman for purposes of federal law. 

Two landmark judgments enshrine the rights of homosexual couples and advance the cause of full legalization. The country's highest court declared unconstitutional a federal law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman as a violation of the right to equality of homosexuals.

However, many aspects of marriage laws that affect the daily lives of the citizens of the United States are determined by the states, not the Federal Government, and the Law on Defence of Marriage Act does not prevent individual states define the better understand marriage. In fact, many scholars of law believe that the Federal Government cannot impose a definition of marriage above the laws of all states through legislation.

Anti-abortion law

In the United States induced abortion or abortion is legal in all states  after the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case Roe v. Wade, in January 22 of 1973. This landmark ruling establishes a period of the first 3 months of pregnancy when a person could have an abortion because it was the time during which the foetus have a  viable-probability of surviving outside the womb. The ruling forbade the various states from imposing any strictures against early abortion during that period but restrictions or ban could be imposed once the three months period was crossed.

Many early feminists were not in support of abortion because they considered that this would increase attacks on women and increase their insecurity but they had to be corrected.  Till now there was no law to protect women from rape by the husband and women did not have the right to divorce and the right to refusal of sex. Legalizing abortion was for some a solution to a part of the problem without modifying its root cause. Mill was of the opinion that if a person of her own free will and with full knowledge of the consequences performs some action which justified the harm inflicted on the self justifies the action in terms of the goals, aims and likings then the action is legalised.

Law on the use of marijuana:

The central argument is based on the fundamental right that each person has to choose how you want to lead your life, including the obligation of the State to respect the decision of the city on substances that decide to use or consume. Other supporters of the measure based his defence on the belief that it would be an important means to eradicate the mafia -related drug trafficking. Some  political parties support a legalization and liberalization of drug control laws for therapeutically using.  Legalization would end the black market and the consequent black money generated by drug trafficking and reduce the social and political corruption as well as environmental damage. 

California voters approved by referendum in 1996 Proposition 215, which allows marijuana for medical use. Since then, eight states have passed similar laws, and have sparked legal battles. Still unresolved is the underlying conflict between state laws that allow medical marijuana, and the federal law, which considers all marijuana use illegal.  It needs to be understood that laws cannot determine the ways of the moral consciousness in a society. One of the main reasons why many U.S. states have not yet legalized marijuana for medicinal use is the fear that doing so will lead to an increase of criminal offenses and that could turn users into addicts and dispensaries into hiding places for marijuana. Twenty-five cities and counties in Colorado, in the U.S limited the legal sale of marijuana in about 160 stores and it became the first in the world to do so freely to all over 21 years of age. This measure is the result of Amendment 64, adopted by popular vote which legalized the possession and use of marijuana up to 28 grams for nonmedical use.

The legalized sale of marijuana will demonstrate safety and economic potential of regulated marijuana market and also highlight the value of marijuana as a consumer product for adults and provide a foretaste of future legal sales of marijuana. Not everyone shares this optimism and think this will open a door to legalize increased marijuana usage.

Status of implementation of euthanasia

The law in the United States does not favour euthanasia and a Montana Court ruled that the constitution of the state is violated when there is a case where suicide is assisted. A ban on euthanasia violates the right of  privacy guaranteed by the constitution of the state and also the premise that human dignity must be preserved and the people suffering from terminal diseases have a right to their lives to end in a dignified manner. The forces which support euthanasia had a major victory when a vote for legalising assisted suicide was passed in the Washington state.. With this vote Washington became the second state after Oregon which legalized the issue of assisted suicide. Terminally ill adults with mental capacity and who have been predicted a life expectancy lesser than six months, may apply for self administration of lethal medicines under the supervision of a doctor.  The Supreme Court of the US ruled in 1994 that terminally ill patients who are dying and are in acute and unbearable pain and suffering can choose to ask their doctors for prescription drugs which could help ease their sufferings even if they resulted in causing unconsciousness of hasten the ultimate process of causing death through the use of these drugs.  

Some recent judgments on the issue include a case where an elderly Connecticut citizen told the  police he had cleaned the gun for  his dying friend, and left it within reach of the for the friend to kill himself. The man received probation. Even if in this case the law and the facts appear apparently crystal clear but they are not, the jurors have their own internal rules for determination about what is evil.

Distributing and purchasing child pornography.

Robert George is of the view that if the virtue of citizens can be encouraged by the existence of laws that discourage even private vice, then such laws may well be justified by reference to the common good. Suppose that one wishes to argue that child pornography material should be legally forbidden. One might say that the justification for prohib­ition of this behaviour is because of the harm done to the child in the making and distributing of this material. To succeed, one would have to show that the harm alleged to the child is actually present, and that this harm is of a properly uncontroversial variety. It is not clear that the evidence of that sort of harm is available and is sufficiently noncontroversial. But if we wish we can put this aside by noting that the pornography targeted might be computer generated with extremely realistic, depictions. No children are involved in its making. It is hard to see how a consistent defender of the harm-to-others principle could support legal proscription of the distribution and pur­chase of child pornography of this form. Some have claimed that use of such materials makes users inflict harm on children, but the actual evidence is missing and it is unclear whether it shows anything more than that those inclined to harm children are more likely to purchase child pornography. And if there is anything that defender of the harm-to-others principle have wanted to rule out, it is the appeal about unsubstantiated and uncertain future harms to others for the sake of precipitating an action that is primarily self degrading.

A defender of morality laws might claim here that the point of distributing and purchasing child pornography promotes sexual gratification through its use and the defender of a moral legislation might claim that there is not much to be said against the view that seeking self gratification through use of explicit sexual depictions of children is debasing, corrupt, and vile.

It is hard to believe that there will be any results forthcoming from some experiment in living that will show us that it is anything but that, or that whether it is debasing, corrupt, and vile is something that varies among persons based on their circumstances, circumstances that legislators are not in a position to fathom. If it is plausible that legally pro­scribing the distribution and purchase of child pornography will dis­courage the seeking of gratification through the use of sexually explicit depictions of children while discouraging other forms of equally bad or worse conduct then there may well be justification for use of a moral legislation in cases of this type.