Our panel of 91 professional philosophers has responded to

58
 questions about 
Abortion
43
 questions about 
Color
23
 questions about 
History
70
 questions about 
Truth
218
 questions about 
Education
31
 questions about 
Space
151
 questions about 
Existence
392
 questions about 
Religion
5
 questions about 
Euthanasia
88
 questions about 
Physics
1280
 questions about 
Ethics
244
 questions about 
Justice
221
 questions about 
Value
54
 questions about 
Medicine
67
 questions about 
Feminism
574
 questions about 
Philosophy
75
 questions about 
Beauty
374
 questions about 
Logic
58
 questions about 
Punishment
105
 questions about 
Art
32
 questions about 
Sport
110
 questions about 
Animals
80
 questions about 
Death
287
 questions about 
Language
69
 questions about 
Business
110
 questions about 
Biology
36
 questions about 
Literature
24
 questions about 
Suicide
34
 questions about 
Music
68
 questions about 
Happiness
39
 questions about 
Race
51
 questions about 
War
284
 questions about 
Mind
81
 questions about 
Identity
154
 questions about 
Sex
170
 questions about 
Freedom
2
 questions about 
Culture
89
 questions about 
Law
96
 questions about 
Time
282
 questions about 
Knowledge
134
 questions about 
Love
208
 questions about 
Science
4
 questions about 
Economics
2
 questions about 
Action
117
 questions about 
Children
77
 questions about 
Emotion
124
 questions about 
Profession
27
 questions about 
Gender
75
 questions about 
Perception

Question of the Day

Let's stick with criminal law here. One obvious reason why "immoral" doesn't entail "illegal" is that what's legal, what's not, and what the punishments are needs to be clear. In a functioning legal system, it's generally possible to determine in advance whether something is a crime, and in cases where it's not clear, there's a system for settling the matter, with various safeguards and forms of appeal built in. But there are plenty of moral loose ends — matters on which people disagree, sometimes vehemently, about whether something is immoral.

We might try restricting things by saying that actions which are clearly immoral should be illegal. Unfortunately, however, that doesn't move the ball as far as it would need to go. When people disagree vehemently about moral matters, one side typically thinks something is clearly immoral and the other side that it clearly isn't. Few of us would want to live in a state where we might be subject to imprisonment because some judge judges that something we think is moral is actually immoral. I may think that a statutory law is a bad one, but I can at least know in advance what the law actually is and work to get it changed if I want to.

In addition to these more general reasons, there's sheer practicality. Legal systems aren't meant to address all problems or govern all behavior, and thank Heavens for that. For one thing, the resources it would take to enforce all of morality through the law would be extraordinary, and better spent in other ways. But also, most people — I'm one — think that there should be a sphere of life that's outside the reach of the State. If morality is entirely swallowed up by the law, that sphere will shrink to almost nothing. And again: I suspect that very few of us would want to live in a country like that.