Fuller identified eight principles of the morality of law. Despite critics, many people have given support to Fuller as a proffer or in legal philosophy. Fuller emphasizes that the rule of law needs to protect and guide law enforcement officers and citizens equally. As a result, Fuller identifies these key principles in the morality of law (Fuller, 1975):
- A Law needs to be general as making it specifically promotes some kinds of behavior.
- A law needs a lot of promulgation to all people that it is instituted to serve. Additionally, it should be easily accessible by the citizens.
- Laws are supposed to be prospective; they should act as a future guiding tool rather than correcting past mistakes.
- Laws need to be very clear for citizens to know what is required, permitted, or prohibited.
- Laws should be not contradicting as that will create confusion in its implementation as well as to the citizens.
- Laws should be constant and should not be created against the impossible.
- Finally, congruency needs to exist between the law and the enforcement norms.
Drugs at a Friend’s House
Morally, once a person is a law enforcement officer, he is charged with ensuring that the law is in place. As an off-duty officer, one is not supposed to engage in handling issues but he is morally charged with reporting to officers on duty. However, this varies with the states. In this case, there is a dilemma of what will be seen as interfering with the friend’s party and protecting the law (Peruzzotti & Smulovitz, 2006).
The policy systems have clear criteriforof dealing with narcotic drugs, the victims should be reported. According to Fuller, the legal consideration is that the law against drug use has been widely communicated and society has accepted the law as appropriate and useful. As an officer, failure to report such a case can be used in the future by others to hinder my duty. Consequently; as an officer, I will report this case to any officer on duty to apprehend the victims (Fuller, 1975).
Accepting Gifts
Accepting gifts has a lot of moral problems for police officers. Additionally, the issue is well addressed in the police ethical conduct under corruption. While corruption is understood as a breach of policing law, acceptance of gifts still raises a lot of ethical dilemmas. First, determining the intention of the gift might be hard; an officer might take the gift simply as a sign of appreciation only later realizing that it was bait. One can give for influence purposes or as future bait. Secondly, other citizens might see this as bribery hence a police officer will be considered corrupt, which will limit his community policing capacity (Delattre, 2011).
Different states have limits of gifts that an officer is allowed to take, for example, gifts below $200 in Philadelphia and Texas. However, determining the motive behind these gifts might be quite difficult. Accepting gifts hence becomes professional ethics rather than legal jurisprudent. Legally, an officer should not accept any gift from the community. Gift supports corruption even in the community, additionally, they can be used as influencing tools for favors in community policing. Policies a law implementer needs to respect the law and provide an excellent example to the community. Gifts will give room to the benefits of doubt in one jurisdiction (Fuller, 1975).
Homosexual Partner
There exists no moral problem in this scenario. At the same time, this case is no policy dictation but the application of professional discretion is required. Making a decision between Ted and Jones needs consideration of workplace ethics rather than legal provisions. The gay issue is today accepted in many states, however, in a station only one or two officers might be gay individuals. Accepting James’ request will hinder teamwork and create work alienation towards Ted (Trebilcock & Daniels, 2008).
As a supervisor, my duty is to ensure my officers work together and everyone feels part of our organization. Since only James has a problem with working with a homosexual partner, who cannot harm him in any way, I will offer counsel service to James. Evidently, despite being gay, Ted has shown a good track record and alienating from another officer might only affect his production. Consideration should be put over James to ensure he understands the ethics of workplace values and develops the ability to work with diverse groups (Delattre, 2011).
Changing Ted from gay to non-gay might be hard compared to impacting teamwork values to James. Consequently, in future, our station might be limited to officers that only Ted and James might be around to run our duties. James needs to be taught and counseled on how to cope with diverse groups (Peruzzotti & Smulovitz, 2006). This might include lessons, field experiments that prove to him that Ted is useful despite being gay. James, on the other hand, needs to understand that the homosexual issue has been legalized. In many states, a gay partner is not committing any offense as long as he is carrying his duties effectively.
References
Delattre, E. (2011). Character and cops: Ethics in policing (6th ed.). Washington, DC: AEI Press.
Fuller, L. (1975). The Morality of Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Peruzzotti, E., & Smulovitz, C. (2006). Enforcing the rule of law: social accountability in the new Latin American democracies. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Trebilcock, J., & Daniels, J. (2008). Rule of law reform and development: charting the fragile path of progress. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.