Episode 10

Episode 4 of the Drinks and Thinks podcast, hosted by Conor, titled "Episode 10" was published on December 9, 2020 and runs 56 minutes.

December 9, 2020 ·56m · Drinks and Thinks

Summary

With returning guest Arthur Pinkney, I discuss law in this episode, its origins and our obligations and duties to it, all while enjoying a very tart and cooling gimlet.  Opinion piece: Used colloquially, ‘The Law’ typically means laws created by humans to govern the behaviour of individuals and groups within a society. Unlike laws of nature, human laws can be broken – so why do we have them, and when is it ok to break them? The origin of the rule of law with humans, in my opinion, invariably colours certain laws beyond the basic common laws found everywhere, and influences a number of them into being culturally specific. For instance, laws on alcohol in Muslim countries, and debatably laws on abortion in certain conservative American States. If we want to claim that the basis for when we ought and ought not to obey certain laws is how just they are, the question comes of what grounds ‘just-ness’. A common argument is that morality is what obliges us to obey the law, yet many people may claim that consuming alcohol is not immoral, and neither is abortion, in the same manner that people may claim that being forced into practicing a specific religion based on the country in which one lives is immoral. Does this mean that these laws are unjust, or does it show that morality cannot be the basis for just laws? In my view, the obligation to obey law is based entirely on the collective desire for order in a society – we don’t want to be murdered, and so we do not murder, and enforce punishment in order to disincentivise such actions.

Episode Description