Philosophically speaking ...

One of the classic justifications for criminalising certain acts is Mill's Harm Principle. Within their personal sphere people should have autonomy, however once their acts affect others the state may become involved. Only those acts which harm others should be criminalised.

However, there are obvious difficulties in that offences where the victim is an animal would not be covered. Certain kinds of drug-taking would not be covered where you couldn't cast the issue in terms of damage to those immediately close to you.

The idea of harm can also be scaled up to ridiculous levels e.g. something is harmful to society generally; possibly incorporating the idea of moral harm which really undermined the effectiveness of the principle. However, restricting the issue to physical harm to immediate others would exclude things such as financial crime.

It's an intuitively appealing concept but of little analytic utility.

Victor wrote: »

Philosophically speaking, why are things illegal? Sure, laws make things legal / illegal, but why are certain things make illegal, but others aren't.


What other reasons are there?

Well there's the laws of protectionism, where certain industries are supported in spite of supposed free trade laws, for example where a person can buy a car anywhere in the eu, if they buy it when it was first sold outside the eu, a harsher regime of nct applies, to the benefit of the people who sell new cars in Ireland.

Or the restrictions applied to people with qualifications earned abroad, such as pharmacies, where a person who qualified abroad can dispense drugs and if they made a mistake a person could die, but they can't own a pharmacy for a certain time after qualification, unlike a person who qualified in Ireland.



Moving onto laziness, with a little protectionism

The failure to enact laws to apply the 7th amendment

It took a long while to make it legal to use red led lights on the back of push bikes.

\flamebait{or repeal sections of certain acts from 1861}

Or update laws from the 19th century.
Or even the 15th century (Piracy Act 1612 retained during the recent repeal of old laws)

Then you have social conservatism laws such as the restriction on sales of condoms, or prohibition of gay sex, or the sexual discrimination in the age of consent between girls and boys, or distilling spirits at home, or publicans having to have a license to have a pub, while for the vast majority of this state, the Oireachtas bar was unlicensed.

The social conservatism laws could be expanded to prevent other people having fun, so you have restrictions on people having sex, or taking drugs, or other activities where no harm comes to the participants or third parties, but won't somebody think of the children.
I accept that the drugs trade has some very nasty people involved in it. But a person growing their own cannabis sativa plant, from seeds harvested from either the wild or with a peaceful history, has harmed no-one and is a different kettle of fish from buying from a killing tainted supply chain.


Then you have (bye)laws like in Howth Harbour, where instead of preventing or dealing with oil spills, they ban the feeding of seals, as the seal's eyes were getting damaged from the oil


Then you have the reluctance to legislate for things that are wrong, but are not clearly illegal, such as the behaviour recorded some years back in the finance industry here.
Or making it such that if you make a false affidavit alleging some political rival runs a brothel, you cannot escape by forgetting such details until the political rival produces the tape of you saying it.


Then there is the case of laws made in the face of logic or reason (Won't some one Please think of the Children)
Magic Mushrooms were banned here after one person killed himself, having taken a fair amount of drink, an amount of cannabis, and a small amount of magic mushrooms. Alcohol is a major part of a lot of suicides, yet is never banned because of it. A study in the Netherlands found Psyllicybin to have negligible harmful effects, but it is blamed for a death here and banned.

Or the law that makes children under a certain height and age use a booster seat, but short adults don't have to use one. If it's unsafe for children shorter than some limit to not use a booster seat, surely it's unsafe for children > 12 or adults to sit there unboostered.