Legal, but Immoral

I have discussed elsewhere this odious distinction,

moral/legal

legal and moral
moral, not legal
illegal, immoral

etc. The spirit of Kelsen striking back. For let's consider the useful caveats by Grice:


In 'Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato's Republic', Grice
writes:

"It is not made clear, nor indeed is the question raised, whether
the kind of justice under discussion is _political_ (or politico-legal)
justice, or moral justice. The general tenor of Thrasymachus's remarks
would suggest that his concern is with political (or politico-legal)
justice. Indeed, it seems not impossible that it is part of Thrasymachus's
position that there is no such thing as _moral_ justice, that the concept
of moral justice is chimerical or empty. ... When we operate as moral
philosophers in the borderland between Ethics and Political Theory, one of
the salient questions which we encounter is whether there is a distinction
between moral and political concepts and how such a distinction, if it
eists, should be charcterised. [What is justice? Fairness? Equality of
opportunity? Respect for natural rights?]. ... The difference between moral
and political justice might be thought of as lying in the fact that in the
case of _moral_ justice the system of rules is to be accepted on account of
the intrinsic desirability that conduct of a certain sort should be
governed by practical rules or by practical rules of a cetain sort, where a
system of rules of _political_ justice rests on the desirability of the
_consequences_ of making conduct subject to rules, or to those particular
rules." (p. 326)

And in his far more personal "Prejudices and predilections" in 'Reply to Richards', Grice echoes his-self:

"It seems to me not implausible to
hold that, in repsect of one or another version of _conceptual_ priority,
the legal concept of 'right' is _prior_ to the _moral_ concept of 'right':
the moral concept is only understandable by reference to, and perhaps is
even explicitly definable in terms of, the legal concept. But if that it
so, we are perhaps not debarred from regarding the moral concept as
valuationally prior to the legal concept; the range of application of the
legal concept _ought to be_ always determined by criteria which are couched
in terms of the moral concept." (p. 93).

Etc.

JLS