Moral Regulation
Definition
The use of law to enforce a shared standard of conduct or virtue, independent of any measurable harm to a third party.
Related terms
- Decriminalisation
- The formal removal of conduct from the category of offence, here applied to the movement away from treating status conduct as court...
- 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...
- Vagrancy Law
- Legislation that criminalises being without a fixed residence, visible means of support or, in some versions, the act of begging in public.
- Victimless Crime
- An offence built around conduct where no identifiable third party is harmed against their will, typically because the participants consent or the...
- Consensual Crime
- An offence built on an exchange between willing participants, such as commercial sex, where the label victimless is most contested.
- Legal Moralism
- The position, associated with Patrick Devlin, that the state may criminalise conduct simply because a society's shared moral code condemns it, even...
- Nordic Model
- A sex-work regulation approach, first enacted in Sweden, that criminalises the buyer of sex while decriminalising the seller.
- Public Order Offence
- An offence framed around visible conduct in public space, such as begging or soliciting, rather than around harm to a specific person.
Explained in these topics
- Victimless Crime: Alcoholism, Drugs, Begging, Sex Work, Suicide (Unit I)Law aimed at enforcing a moral standard rather than preventing a concrete, identifiable harm to a third party.
- Victimless Crime and the Limits of Moral Regulation