180"Many problems of modern society cannot be solved by laws and the legal system because moral behavior cannot be legislated."
Cannot many problems nowadays be addressed by laws and the legal system ? In my point of view, I agree with the author insofar as the problems caused by individual moral behaviors, however, when it comes to the group behaviors, laws play an significant role. Also, the author begs the question that social problems are relevant to moral behaviors of public which should be considered carefully.
Some societal problems that are close relevant to moral behaviors by individual can't be solved by laws and legal system which are rigorous and restricted. The Prohibition experiment in America during 1930s is a case in point. The control to drinking which is a kind of individual moral behaviors ended with failture. The same holds true about the steyrodic(embryonic) stem research in the world. Several years ago, through the legal system, the President Bush provided a large number of funds to support this so-called meaningful research in order to save the patients suffering from various diseases. However, after 5 years, this research was prohibited because of the different opinions about the consequence of the research which may contradicte the ethical belief and some even question the validity of this reseach. In this sense, the laws and legal systems have trouble in solving these problems which are relevant to moral behaviors.
However, the vast majority of problems exsiting are caused by behaviors of group that did not obey certain standards. Consider the environmental issues, the global impressing problems which are faced by each country. The form of these problems spring from the outgrowth of inextroable(inexorable) advancement of society and the requirement to the maximize profit of businessmen. These objective and subjective factors propel the deteroriation(deterioration) of environment together. However, the effective laws, such as controlling to the quantity of polutant(pollutant) emission by plants improves the environment to some extent. In short, the problems relating to behaviors of group not only can but also must be solved by laws.
Also, part of the social problems and moral behaviors know no bound. To these problems we should seek other solution aside from laws and legal system. The problem that large population in the world is a case in point. It is brought out by the improvement and civilization of the societies and not relevant to the moral behavior. Admittedly, laws and legal systems cannot be the solution to the large population. However, the methods playing TV soap opera about white collars in Brazil deserve consideration. Thus, moral behaviors should not be an excuse of some existing problems cannot be solved and other ways need to be explored are the better policies to the solution of problems not relevant to moral.
All in all, the contributions of the laws and legal system to the solution of social problems should be discussed case by case. And the reason for the unsolved social problems are various and cannot ascribe to the moral behaviors in a nutshell.