Moral rules cannot be created or altered by deliberate human enactment

Evidence

By contrast moral rules or principles cannot be brought into being or changed or eliminated in this way. To assert that this ‘cannot’ be is not, however, to deny that some conceivable state of affairs is actually the case, as the assertion that human beings ‘cannot’ alter the climate would be. Instead this assertion points to the following facts. It is perfectly good sense to say such things as ‘As from 1 January 1960 it will be a criminal offence to do so-and-so’ or ‘As from 1 January 1960 it will be no longer illegal to do so-and-so’ and to support such statements by reference to laws which have been enacted or repealed. By contrast such statements as ‘As from tomorrow it will no longer be immoral to do so-and-so’ or ‘On 1 January last it became immoral to do so-and-so’ and attempts to support these by reference to deliberate enactment would be astonishing paradoxes, if not senseless. — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 443

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 443
• XREF: connects to: Legal systems rest on customary social rules rather than moral foundations — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 56; Schopenhauer derived body-as-will doctrine from Kant’s moral law view. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2737; Moral denunciation constrains behavior more effectively than merely procedural rules — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 2517 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Legal systems rest on customary social rules rather than moral foundations #complicates (0.75) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 56