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1 l Introduction IN THIS BOOK I SKETCH A NEW FRAMEWORK through which to view the relationship between troubling “life issues” and the realm of law in pluralistic liberal democracies such as the United States. At present, many people who oppose practices such as abortion and euthanasia, including many Catholics, seem to assume the relationship between law and morality is limited to two antipodal options. On the one hand is the firewall model: personal opposition to such practices aside, the law should be morally neutral in order to avoid imposing one particular set of values upon the entire society. On the other hand is the enforcement model: abortion and euthanasia are immoral and should therefore be completely banned, and even subject to criminal penalties. This book proposes a third way. Let me state at the outset that I think that the practices commonly described as abortion and euthanasia generally involve the wrongful killing of human beings. At the same time, I recognize that my judgment does not settle the question about how the law should treat these issues in our pluralistic society, where not only the moral status but even the proper definition of both abortion and euthanasia are deeply contested on a number of grounds. In my view, neither model described earlier does an adequate job of addressing the numerous factors involved in wise lawmaking. The first model gives too little weight to the socially important moral message of law while the second model mistakenly views the moral message as the only relevant factor. Against those who would contend that the law must always be morally neutral in a pluralistic society, I argue that legal frameworks are never valueneutral ; in fact, they invariably carry strong normative messages about how the denizens of a particular society ought to go about living their lives. By its nature, lawmaking privileges some activities as admirable and worth pursuing while discounting others as socially deleterious, less valuable, and even harmful to the persons who engage in them. The law does inculcate morality, and for that reason it is essential for lawmakers—and for those citizens who elect them to office—to take responsibility for the values the law communicates and conveys as well as for the habits of living that the law promotes. Against those who would move directly from a moral condemnation to a legal (often criminal) prohibition, I propose that sound lawmaking has to take into account far more than the moral status of the acts it purports to regulate, particularly if the legislative process views those acts in the abstract and in isolation from the circumstances in which they are generally performed. If it is to be pedagogically effective, law must key its moral message to the actual culture and customs of the people it purports to govern. Moreover, lawmakers must be realistic about the goals they expect the law to achieve. No law can turn a band of brigands into a band of saints overnight. Finally, the most effective means of conveying a moral message may not be the most obvious and powerful . Criminal prohibitions are not the only tools the law has to communicate its moral judgments. In fact, other arrows in the legal quiver are likely to be more nuanced and effective instruments of moral pedagogy, particularly in situations of social conflict. For example, noncriminal regulations, tax breaks, and other regulatory incentives can effectively encourage morally acceptable behavior and discourage unacceptable behavior without incurring either the risks (e.g., rebellion and backlash) or costs (e.g., expenses of law enforcement and incarceration) associated with the enactment of criminal strictures. In short, the overall purpose of this volume is to propose a nuanced view about how law can function as a moral teacher in a pluralistic society such as the United States, a view that is at once optimistic about the effectiveness of moral pedagogy without being utopian, and realistic about moral disagreement without being relativistic. Sketching generalities, however, is not the sum total of my efforts. I also attempt to work out the details of how the vision of law I endorse would deal with specific and neuralgic moral and social questions such as abortion, genetic testing and euthanasia. After considering what the substantive law on these issues should be (and, by implication, what legal frameworks the legislature should attempt to put into place), I then examine how voters should grapple with hot-button legal and moral issues in deciding how to cast their ballots for lawmakers and...

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