Relationship between Law and Ethics
Introduction
Law is a system of rule that a society of government develop to deal with crime, business agreement, and social relationships; while ethics are moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. Laws are compulsory guidelines, while ethics are voluntary guidelines. Human beings start learning ethics from the time of birth while according to law, the best course of action is to make them standardized. Law is not usually, always based on ethics. The close relationship between the two is that ethics involves emotions, while the law is unemotional in it is delivery. Ethics guides how well we can obey the law.
There are many situations in life, were following the law does not make one ethical. By doing this, it makes ethics a more demanding standard than the law. For instance, if a wealthy human being intends to splash thousands of his or her cash on the anniversary of his or her dog. Whiles his or her neighbor has no money to buy food and is being forced out of his or her home due to lack of rent. There is no law to prohibit wealthy human being from doing so. If he or she decides not to, it is because of the dictates of his conscience, not because of the dictates of the law. His conscience, ethical value system, and principles forbid him or her to rejoice when someone else nearby is in sorrow. The law has no role to play in such a situation; again, all moral and ethical actions don’t involve the law.
They are thus making ethics more demanding of standards in our society.