"His criticism of Mill is to be found in the sombre and impressive book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which he wrote as a direct reply to Mill's essay On Liberty. It is evident from the tone of the book that Stephen thought he had found crushing arguments against Mill and had demonstrated that the law might justifiably enforce morality as such or, as he said, that the law should be "a persecution of the grosser forms of vice." Nearly a century later, on the publication of the Wolfenden Committee's report, Lord Devlin, now a member of the House of Lords and a most distinguished writer on the criminal law, in his essay on The Enforcement of Morals took as his target the Report's contention "that there must be a realm of morality and immorality which is not the law's business" and argued in opposition to it that "the suppression of vice is as such the law's business as the suppression of subversive activities." Though a century divides these two legal writers, the similarity in the general tone and sometimes in the detail of their arguments is very great."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Philosophers from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandLawyers from EnglandPeople from LondonJudges from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty, and Morality (1963), p. 16
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Fitzjames_Stephen
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
James Fitzjames Stephen
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (March 3, 1829 – March 11, 1894) was an English lawyer and judge, created 1st Baronet Stephen by Queen Victoria. Through his rebuttal of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, titled Liberty, Equality, Fraternity he established himself as a conservative philosopher.
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by James Fitzjames Stephen →
Related Quotes
"The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite."
"I am not the advocate of Slavery, Caste, and Hatred, nor do I deny that a sense may be given to the words, Liberty, E…"
"Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting head…"
"To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a …"
"Originality consists in thinking for yourself, not in thinking differently from other people."
"Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a …"
"To try to regulate the internal affairs of a family, the relations of love or friendship, or many other things of the…"
"Men have an all but incurable propensity to try to prejudge all the great questions which interest them by stamping t…"
"To try to make men equal by altering social arrangements is like trying to make the cards of equal value by shuffling…"
"The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number …"