Sometimes, we force people to conform to the law, regardless of what they might want. Other times, we reform the law in order to more properly reflect what our citizens want as a society, how they live their lives and how. How do we decide when people should conform to the law, and when the law should conform to society?

On March 19 2011, Thomas Pogge responded to a question posed on March 17 concerning (inter alia) the morality of an attorney's decision to represent a person accused of a serious crime in circumstances in which the attorney has "very strong reason to believe" that the client is guilty. The response suggests that "in view of the enormous damage done by repeat offenders who have been wrongly acquitted earlier ...... such a defense attorney should decline the case or resign from it". With all due respect to the learned philosopher, this suggestion overlooks a fundamental precept of procedural justice in all criminal trials - "an accused person is presumed innocent until proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be guilty". Only a serious misunderstanding of the role of a defense attorney can give rise to a suggestion that my attorney should resign from my case simply on the basis of her own (subjective?) belief that my acquittal in a previous trial was "wrong" and that she believes that the prosecutor's case is well-founded. Even jurors are routinely instructed not to allow their own beliefs to form the basis for deciding that an accused person is guilty - they must examine the totality of the evidence placed before the Court, and only if they are satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that the prosecutor has proved every element of the charges beyond any reasonable doubt, may they bring in a verdict of "guilty". Surely I am entitled to be represented by a qualified attorney in defending myself against whatever charges the prosecution may decide to level against me?

Hello. My question is about law and morality. It is commonly assumed that intentionality/ purpose is an important factor in determining how morally 'good' an action is. For example if I give to charity because I honestly care about the cause and hope to improve society by supporting this cause, my action would be considered more morally good than someone who donates to improve their public reputation (why companies are often involved in charity work for example). So an act which is committed for altruistic reasons is often considered more moral than one primarily committed for selfish reasons/ reasons that will directly benefit the person. However, the introduction of laws, with associated punishments for transgressing these laws, can change the intentionality of people’s behaviour from altruistic to self-centred. For example if it wasn't illegal to steal from a shop, people’s reason/justification for not stealing would most probably be a moral one (i.e. stealing is wrong, stealing harms society etc). But since stealing is illegal, people’s dominant/ most cognitively obvious reason for not stealing would often be a far more selfish/ self-centred one of avoiding punishment or perhaps rather more morally neutral desire for wanting to obey laws/ fit into society etc. So since laws often reduce people’s capacity for altruistically-motivated behaviour (due to the added motivation of avoiding punishment), do laws diminish people’s capacity for morally good behaviour in many circumstances? Or is altruistic behaviour often an illusion, and all human behaviour is selfish to some degree? Or does this issue not really matter, since these laws are supposed to bring justice and reduce the incidence of these immoral acts, which far trumps the above possible negative effect?

Do attorneys who successfully enable guilty clients to evade conviction (or who manage to convict innocent defendants) have any reason to feel that they are acting immorally? Or are they beyond reproach so long as they themselves do nothing illegal or procedurally inappropriate in the course of their work?

Is it unfair for a judge to give their verdict based on a technicality?

Is there a genuine case to be made for outlawing marijuana given the fact that alcohol and tobacco are legal? In other words, is there a way to make a distinction between marijuana on the one hand and alcohol/tobacco on the other hand such that it will appear legally justifiable to outlaw the one and not the other?

I am interested in the philosophical implications of the two competing views of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It is often contended that an "individualist" view of what equal protection requires can't explain why only classifications based on race or sex require "heightened scrutiny," instead of the ordinary rational basis test. In some sense, this objection seems dead on. If what equal protection prohibits is the use of morally invidious classifications by state actors then certainly race and sex can't be the only two that we ought to be concerned about. On the other hand, it seems like the "hierarchical" view is fraught with similarly serious problems. Who counts, nowadays, as a "discrete, insular minority" that equal protection ought to help? Does the fact that women are a majority mean that they should not benefit from heightened scrutiny, but men should? Or, if "discrete, insular minority" is just short-hand for politically handi-capped, how do we know how politically handi-capped a group must be to qualify? I understand that this question is rooted in Constitutional Law, but I would appreciate a response exploring what the competing views logically require, as opposed to how they have developed in our case law. Thanks! Best, Sam

Is it okay to disobey a just law just because you disagree with it? For example, take under-age drinking of alcohol. In various parts of the world there is a general disagreement about when it is a right age to drink alcohol. In the United States, the drinking age is 21. Many choose to begin drinking at an earlier age because they feel they have a right to do so. What philosophical problems are there with disobeying a just law?

I think that in cases of horrific crimes, the death penalty is acceptable, or even required by retributive justice. However, I think this only applies to cases where there is absolutely no room for doubt. I also think that there really are such cases where there is 100% certainty e.g. the perpetrator was seen by many witnesses and confesses, plus as much additional evidence as you need. Unfortunately, if we only make convictions where we have the luxury of this certainty, we set the bar too high, and many guilty people escape conviction. Inevitably, under any reasonable judicial system there will be people charged for crimes they didn’t commit. But when you are charged with a crime, you are thereby unequivocally guilty, and there’s no way of charging someone with being guilty with the qualification, “he might not have done it” and another “he’s guilty of the crime and there’s no doubt”. In the eyes of the law, a guilty verdict is definitive; you did it, end of story. Is there a problem with this either/or approach nature of being charged? Shouldn’t the law recognise that someone is viewed as guilty on the basis of a balance of probability and not, or not always, because the truth has been uncovered as to guilt and innocence? A related problem is that maybe the situations in which there’s 100% certainty are those in which “everyone knows who did it” but there’s no code we can lay down to specify when those situations will occur, you just know it when you see it, kind of thing. But it seems bizarre that we can all clearly recognise cases in which the guilt of a person is not in question, but not be able to use capital punishment just in those cases without risking innocent people being treated in this way.

Is racial profiling immoral because it is ineffective? For instance, would the racial profiling of blacks become increasingly justifiable if blacks increasingly became criminals?