When people pull one post selected, cherry picked example to argue for a general trend, it baffles me. The proper way to do evidence on the pros/cons of a system is to take all evidence.
Yes there's outliers. But that's all they are. As ethics change, laws change, and vice versa. Neither exists or even is workable without the other. What is ethical in one time or place or situation changes, just like laws, and for the same reason- they're cultural constructs that evolve.
As to claiming ethics is superior to law, history is also filled with people having different ethics going outside the law and causing great harm, genocides, and wars. Ethics is not defined in any universal sense. One could argue every lawbreaker has different ethics than those not breaking laws.
Again, I prefer a society where people follow societally agreed upon laws over ones where everyone choose their own ethics and acts accordingly.
Law is a good thing, just not sufficient. Every legal system has holes, and society is much stronger if there are additional backstops to bad behavior.
Agreed. However, since everyone has different ethics, it's only when enough people believe the same thing is morally correct that it often becomes law. Most of the bad stuff we decry now happened because the masses found it ethical. And certainly plenty we now find ethical will be considered unethical in the future.
But of the two, only law is stable enough to run a society. It's what balances all the variety of ethical issues between beliefs.
Yes there's outliers. But that's all they are. As ethics change, laws change, and vice versa. Neither exists or even is workable without the other. What is ethical in one time or place or situation changes, just like laws, and for the same reason- they're cultural constructs that evolve.
As to claiming ethics is superior to law, history is also filled with people having different ethics going outside the law and causing great harm, genocides, and wars. Ethics is not defined in any universal sense. One could argue every lawbreaker has different ethics than those not breaking laws.
Again, I prefer a society where people follow societally agreed upon laws over ones where everyone choose their own ethics and acts accordingly.