The use of law within society is a necessary and important tool by which to promote societal harmony. Whilst I have anarchist tendencies in my liberalism, I am willing to concede that the total freedom of the individual needs balance with the freedoms of the collective. In other words, total freedom of the individual would necessarily impose restrictions on others. If no forms of behaviour were ever considered unacceptable the weak would get no protection from the strong and the mob would rule. It is therefore both desirable and useful to have legal boundaries which define acceptable behaviour.



I believe, within that context, there should be as few laws as possible. Since, modern parliamentary democracies have a well established method of introducing new laws and then using the various arms of the state to enforce the laws created, it requires special vigilance on the part of citizens to ensure that the bare minimum of laws are created. The British Parliament has in recent years vastly expanded the number of laws on the statute books whilst being extremely slow to repeal those laws which are no longer appropriate or indeed unfashionable. Admittedly, parliamentary direction usually provides law enforcers with guidelines as to which laws should be actively enforced and which should be regarded with less dedication. That is however, no substitute for providing
as many freedoms for citizens as possible without the threat that something that has been tacitly given approval may suddenly be changed at the whim of parliamentary direction. The Magna Carta established the principal, that whatever is not declared illegal is by definition, legal.  This is the most appropriate basis for a legal framework; it is better to trust in the individual over the collective.



The laws to which, in principal, I have the most objections are those of a religious or political nature. It is the laws introduced that aim to protect the views of a particular dogma rather than protect citizens from malicious criminal behaviour which represent the most dangerous infringement of liberty. Quite simply, too many people have suffered under laws that with historical hindsight appear cruel, unjust and unnecessary. Examples can be taken from any point in history, but I will draw on just several to illustrate cases in which the verdicts and sentences imposed, to the average contemporary mind, must appear both unreasonable and unjust.



The first example is the notorious case of the jailing of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality. The Victorians had an attitude to sexuality that was both repressive and profoundly hypocritical and the fashionable views of morality at the time led to numerous laws which curtailed individual _expression. Wilde was sentenced to seven years in jail for acts which were considered by some of his peers as immoral and repugnant. His hardships endured in jail, his loss of liberty and his removal from society seem now to be a gross act of injustice with today’s emphasis on sexual equality. It is almost unthinkable that a law could now be passed which prescribes a jail term for enjoying a relationship with somebody of the same sex. Wilde suffered for his views and personal desires, which society, at a
different time, would have treated with indifference.



The second example is the burning at the stake of Sir Thomas More. Sir Thomas was a devout Catholic whose unshakeable faith in the Catholic doctrine lead to an inevitable conflict with the rise of Protestantism in England in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Whilst I do not share More’s religious convictions, like Voltaire, I deeply respect his right to hold those views without fear or favour. The fact that a despotic monarchy had him executed in keeping with the religious laws at the time, highlights the tragic nature of laws designed to uphold one narrow moral or religious view over another.



The third and final example is that of the treatment of Thomas Paine. Paine held profoundly democratic views which represented a dangerous challenge to the power held by the Whigs in Britain. Under William Pitt, the landed gentry held power and in conjunction with a corrupt monarchy held the average citizen in subjugation while maintaining wealth and privilege for the rich. When Thomas Paine’s well-written Common Sense was published and became a best-selling phenomenon in the late 1700’s, Pitt did everything in his power to denounce Paine. He finally resorted to attempting to have him arrested for treason. That we enjoy a reasonable degree of political
freedom in the early 21st century can in part be attributed to the campaigning and writing of people like Paine who risked personal liberty for political change. Paine escaped to France but many of his ilk suffered politically inspired injustice.



It is true that homosexuality, religious belief and government criticism no longer attract the kind of legal hostility they once did. It is nonetheless necessary to guard against modern legal developments which reverse this liberal trend. At one time or another laws have been created that favoured men over women, the rich over the poor, the conservative over the progressive and many other specific groups over others.  What all of these laws have in common is a regrettable inspiration from a narrow moral ideology, religious dogma or political prerogative which has inevitably been shown to be transient or fashionable at best.



There appear to be laws which are universally acceptable, for example; theft, murder, incest, rape and others are typically deemed objectionable crimes. Societies have punished their citizens for millennia for committing these acts. Judicial leniency has often been exercised to determine the severity of the crime and has again regrettably in this area been subject to the contemporary fashions of the time. Thieves deported to Australia suffered tremendously for what may have been a life saving loaf.



This discussion leads to the inevitable and obvious question – how does one determine what is a fashionable law from one that is likely to be universal? This complex problem is fraught with difficulty. Some societal problems are short lived due to laws being imposed which bring necessary order to specific and possibly non-recurring problems. An example may be a restraining order imposed on a community infested with plague. The law in this case may be vital in the short term but may lead to unnecessary curbs on freedom if not removed from the statute books or if the law is not crafted to deal specifically enough with the problem. Laws in this sense should be as narrow as possible so as to avoid their use beyond the original aim of the law.



Ultimately some sort of litmus test is required. Does the law promote one group over another? In general laws which promote some group over another group must be unreliable for longevity.  If this test was used, woman would have had the vote from day one and slavery would never have become legal. What would the test say about something like the minimum wage though? In this case, the minimum law wage is open to all – or that is what it would seem. Since everyone who works has the minimum wage law applied to them, it appears to favour nobody. That may not be true however, the law may prevent some people from working as their marketable skills may be worth less than the minimum wage rate and they would effectively be prevented from gaining employment. South Africa is in the process of reconsidering its minimum wage laws in just this light. The ethics of paying someone too little versus paying them at all is a quandary. The solution in this case may arise from a common sense approach to the problem. In the UK unemployment is at generational lows whilst South Africa has historically tragic levels of unemployed. In South Africa’s case the majority is simply too small a majority to justify high minimum wages.  A sense of proportion is therefore needed.



In general however, I am in favour of laws which make no reference to a narrow morality, politics or religion in their basis for right or legal enfranchisement. Fashionable trends change over time and so will the prevailing moral, political and religious climate. I foresee a time when today’s sexual liberalism will be replaced with a new fervent conservatism, such as that which is happening in America. While my views are firmly with the liberals, I expect the societal sexual politics will go full circle to a more Victorian attitude at some stage in the future. So too with politics, late 20th century political consensual dialogue is being replaced with dogmatic determinism. These subtle changes are likely to herald a slew of new laws to accommodate this trend. It is in order to prevent arbitrary moral persecution re-entering the legal agenda that I am so in favour of a secular legal system.