Morality and law are two concepts that intertwine throughout the history of civilised society.

The
following essay will attempt to examine the question in two parts. The laws dependence on
morality will be explored in regard to the judicial application of law and law being defined by
morality will be interpreted in relation to legislation. The extent of moralitys influence on the law
largely depends on the context in which the law is employed. Numerous factors affect the degree to
which morality is involved. The essay will attempt to evaluate the extent of this relationship by
defining the relevant terms, using legal theory, cases and the writings of knowledgeable academics
who pondered this question.

Despite both of them being thoroughly extensive topics, law is more straightforward to define. It is
defined as the codified or uncodified set of guidelines that govern the behaviour of a countrys
citizens and groups (Collins, 2004). This definition is a simple encapsulation of what the law
represents and aims to achieve in society. However, morality is more difficult to define, purely due
to its nature as a more timeless and changeable principle. Pinpointing a definition of morality is a
task that is primarily philosophical, and it inevitably leads to morality being defined either
normatively, or descriptively. According to the Stanfords online encyclopaedia of Philosophy,
morality can be defined:

1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such
as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behaviour, or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put
forward by all rational persons. (Gert and Gert, 2002)

The distinction between both definitions will become increasingly relevant later on in the essay
when the two predominant theories of law and morality are introduced. We can see that the
descriptive definition takes a more subjective approach, where the mindset of an area plays a key
role in how morality is interpreted. This leaves morality as a flexible concept which can vary greatly
from culture to culture. The second definition is more rigid, as it expects the idea of morality to be
the same across all cultures and creeds when exposed to identical parameters.

This leads to the paramount question: whether law should be influenced by morality at all. There
are two predominant theories in regard to this matter: natural law and positivism. Natural law is a
more traditional approach, crystallized by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Aquinas was a
catholic who declared that all human beings have a rational sense of right and wrong instilled by
God. In Aquinas view, all man made law simply descends from this inherent sense of right and
wrong.