Morality and Legality

While there is a theoretical debate regarding the relationship between legality and morality (i.e., Sunstein 1996, Cooter 1998, 2000), minimal empirical work has been done to examine how lay people view the relation between these two notions (Blaufus et al., 2016). The purpose of this project is to examine this question empirically, and extend on previous scholarship with the support of empirical data. This study aims to investigate whether the legal status of an act (i.e., illegal vs. not illegal) can influence "wrongness" judgements of that act, as well as moral character judgements of the person enacting it.