In connection with the Embryology Bill, Mary Warnock asks, 'how can the law claim the authority on which it depends?' I say nothing in this post about the Embryology Bill; my concern is solely with her general answer.
So, how can the law claim the authority on which it depends? Warnock answers: not on the basis of religion. In a democracy, she says, even one whose values have been much influenced by Christianity, the law's authority can only derive from the 'shared moral beliefs' of its citizens, the 'common good', 'the interests... of all members of society'. I agree with her negative proposition: that the law cannot be soundly based on religious moral authority. I agree also, broadly, with her appeal to shared moral beliefs, people's interests, the common good. But that is not equivalent to this, which she also says:
It is the role of legislators to be consequentialists.Up to a point, yes, but only up to a point. Some of the shared moral beliefs in a democratic society put limits on what may be done, irrespective of the consequences of doing it. They protect the innocent from arbitrary punishment, for example, even if such punishment should be thought to be socially beneficial. They forbid torture and murder likewise, forbid them absolutely, whatever the consequences might be. There are moral values that constrain us independently of social benefits, and the case for the moral beliefs in a democracy having a more general human basis than that of mere religious authority is not to be collapsed into an unalloyed consequentialism.