mr john
The Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1957, Cmd 247
‘The function of the criminal law in this field] is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive and injurious and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official or economic dependence (para. 13).
Unless a deliberate attempt is to be made by society, acting through the agency of the law, to equate the sphere of crime with that of sin, there must be a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law’s business (para. 61).’
Devlin’s Social Cohesion Thesis
Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (1965)
For Devlin, a leading law lord of his day, the law has a duty to enforce certain moral standards. Devlin, as a morally conservative Christian, was critical of the Wolfenden Report and became engaged in a now renowned public debate with the liberal humanist professor of jurisprudence, Herbert Hart.
Devlin posed the following question:
‘What is the connection between crime and sin and to what extent, if at all, should the criminal law of England concern itself with the enforcement and punish sin or immorality as such?’ p.2
In order to answer this question Lord Devlin posed four subsidiary questions:
i) ‘Has society the right to pass judgment at all on matters of morals? Ought there, in other words, to be a public morality, or are morals always a matter for private judgment?’ p.7
‘[S]ociety means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics, morals and ethics no society can exist. Each one of us has ideas about what is good and what is evil; they cannot be kept private from the society in which we live. If men and women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about
‘The function of the criminal law in this field] is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive and injurious and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official or economic dependence (para. 13).
Unless a deliberate attempt is to be made by society, acting through the agency of the law, to equate the sphere of crime with that of sin, there must be a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law’s business (para. 61).’
Devlin’s Social Cohesion Thesis
Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (1965)
For Devlin, a leading law lord of his day, the law has a duty to enforce certain moral standards. Devlin, as a morally conservative Christian, was critical of the Wolfenden Report and became engaged in a now renowned public debate with the liberal humanist professor of jurisprudence, Herbert Hart.
Devlin posed the following question:
‘What is the connection between crime and sin and to what extent, if at all, should the criminal law of England concern itself with the enforcement and punish sin or immorality as such?’ p.2
In order to answer this question Lord Devlin posed four subsidiary questions:
i) ‘Has society the right to pass judgment at all on matters of morals? Ought there, in other words, to be a public morality, or are morals always a matter for private judgment?’ p.7
‘[S]ociety means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics, morals and ethics no society can exist. Each one of us has ideas about what is good and what is evil; they cannot be kept private from the society in which we live. If men and women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about