Legal Moralism
Definition
The position, associated with Patrick Devlin, that the state may criminalise conduct simply because a society's shared moral code condemns it, even where no identifiable harm to another person is shown.
Related terms
- Codification
- The consolidation of criminal law into a single systematic statute, or code, drafted in advance, as opposed to letting offences accumulate through...
- Criminalisation
- The formal process by which a legislature converts a previously lawful or merely deviant act into a criminal offence, typically by enacting...
- Harm Principle
- The idea, associated with John Stuart Mill, that the only legitimate ground for the state to restrict a person's conduct through law...
- Moral Panic
- A period of intense, media-driven public anxiety about a group or behaviour perceived as an exceptional threat to social order. Coined by...
- Overcriminalisation
- A pattern in which legislatures create so many criminal offences, including minor regulatory ones, that the criminal law's reach outgrows its capacity...