Law is a normative value to help society live in collectivity and harmony. For law to be a supreme regulator of all, it must become integral in theory and practice. An integral dimension of law helps State, society and legal systems to balance and harmonize competing claims arising out of complexity and heterogeneity of life and changing needs. Professor Dr. K. Parameswaran outlines his integral theory of law in this series of articles by showing how law must integrate knowledge from other disciplines; bring them under what law wants from them. “…Thus, when law becomes integral, it opens practical and yet unfailing solutions to assist peace, progress, prosperity and protection of all, for our current times and future age…” – author claims. In this article, Part I, author explains the ‘integral dimension of law’ that exists between Law and Ethics.
Law as a discipline cannot avoid ethics. They both have complex relations leading to tensions between legal actors and ethicsdebaters. And the existing legal system, which is largely a two-way interrelationship between State and society, has pushed ethics into a narrative of moral philosophy and, left ethics as dialogues meant for intellectual elites. This is highly unfortunate and could be the sole reason for all kinds of injustice that we see from inequality and lop-sided development that are largely value norms of which ethics is one integral part. In legal education too, in India or aboard, ethics as a subject has not yet received the significance it deserves. This is because of misplaced priorities in the realm of ethical values of knowledge in general and legal knowledge in particular. However, the question remains to be answered. Is ethics important for collective life in our society? Is ethics indispensable for legal systems in order to bring social order, development with justice and equity of all?
Ethics as is largely understood, is a philosophy of ideals, right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, correct and incorrect etc. It is considered as a science by those who want to see ethics as a rational objective, as a philosophy by those
who believe it is a phenomenon capable of subjective experience, as a psychology by those who study the relation among thought-emotion-action complex etc. What is the standpoint of legal literati on the nature of ethics as a discipline of knowledge? When law has an ideal of justice, equality, liberty and fraternity, where is the role of ethics in legal knowledge? This role varies according to the theories that are foundational to the philosophy of law.
Natural school of law that believes law as ‘a felt order and imperative’ considers ethics as a part of that invisible order. It summons ethics to govern social relations. Positivists who believe law as ‘a command of sovereign or State’ consider ethics as a part of law only when it passes through the passage of social and political forces accepted as norms in law-making. Realists who believe law as an experience to be applied in every circumstance, see ethics as a stage in social evolution. Scholars of critical legal studies might consider ethics as something to be re-examined based on norms that are outside political powers and social galvanizers. Kantian followers consider ethics as something good in itself as a categorical imperative without qualifications and connect both means and ends together in assessments of a value. Whereas Benthamites consider ethics as something of a utility flowing consequentially towards a good that one normally expects. As a result of all these standpoints, we see various kinds of ethics that developed over a period of time. They are largely meta-ethics, normative-ethics, applied-ethics, model-ethics, real-ethics etc.
Meta ethics questions the ethical question itself, in order to know whether it is possible to have a knowledge of what is right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, correct and incorrect. This is profound in one way but less practical from point of view of world, reality and life. Meta ethics promotes individualization leaving a doubt on the consequence or impact on social existence. For example, a meta ethical question could be – ‘what is right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, correct and incorrect about acquiring knowledge when there is no such as a thing as knowledge or meaning of knowledge?’
Though this holds a value in mental abstractions and inquiry into knowledge, legal discipline cannot take this meta ethical question when Constitution and the State are rooted into the ideal of justice, equality, liberty and fraternity. When law cannot avoid Constitutional ideals of justice, equality, liberty and fraternity for society, meta ethical questions of doubting the aim and function of justice find no place in legal narratives. Follow Part II for discussions on normative ethics, model ethics and concerns on ethical issues and how they are addressed under integral dimension of law.
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