Lord Devlin, in an essay "Morals and the Criminal Law" in The Philosophy of Law (ed R M Dworkin) Oxford (1977) at p 74 said:
"... society means a community of ideas, without shared ideas on politics, morals, and ethics no society can exist. Each one of us has ideas about what is good and what is evil; they cannot be kept private from the society in which we live. If men and women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about good and evil they will fail; if having based it on common agreement, the agreement goes, the society will disintegrate. For society is not something that is kept together physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought. If the bonds were too far relaxed the members would drift apart. A common morality is part of the bondage. The bondage is part of the price of society; and mankind, which needs society, must pay its price."
The Australian Values Study (section 35) demonstrates that such a consensus exists in the modern Australian community. One of the great problems of our times, however, is that elites in politics, society, media and even in some religious organisations have turned their backs on the traditional conceptions of right and wrong. Some have done so deliberately- others support ideas and causes which have (for them) the unintended effect of undermining values to which they are committed. The need for moral values to be part of the fabric of law and society does not involve support for an established church or state support for religion. Classical liberalism did not reject morality or virtue as such. Classical liberalism rejected the authority of institutions to exhaustively impose compulsory morality. The basic liberal objection to institutional enforcement of morality is that any institution vested with such power is likely to be captured and dominated by persons or groups whose interests will not always coincide with virtue. It is for this reason that liberals distrust power for any purpose and therefore insist upon the separation of church and state.
Religious and moral values suffered as a result of the oppressive clerical authority of the Roman Church. The rise of liberalism accompanied, and indeed may not have been possible without, the Reformation and the emergence of Protestantism which made virtue an individual responsibility and religion a more personal relationship between man and his God.
The emphasis on the Judeo-Christian ethic is not intended to devalue other religions. The analysis points to the historic importance of the Judeo-Christian ethic in the development of western civilisation. The underlying moral precepts of all major religions exhibit a remarkable degree of similarity. The shared common morality which is focused on in this part could just as well have been derived from the basic teachings of another religion. The reference is to "basic moral teachings" which are not always reflected in religious hierarchies and even less so in states which have an "established" religion.
The common law is based on and influenced by the Judeo-Christian ethic. See section 18.2. The emphasis on liability based on fault is the underlying ethical foundation. There is something called civic morality, a shared body of values based on the Judeo-Christian and ancient republican traditions, that is the underpinning of western society. The history of western civilisation was intimately bound up with individual responsibility. An individual had an obligation to be a consciously good person. Absolute freedom leads to anarchy. Law and moral values in interaction sought to creatively channel freedom in the western democratic order.
"These people are constantly saying, 'Give me a consistent conceptual value'. I say, 'honesty', and immediately they come back with 'I can think of plenty of times when you shouldn't be honest'. Well, you know what my answer is to that? 'So what? Mostly, overwhelmingly, it's better to be honest than dishonest.'
And people have got to know that. People have to feel connected to a shared moral community. There is a yearning for morality that, I think, is genetic — and far too many of us in this society have a hole in our souls because, day to day, it just isn't there.
Why do you read 'Pride and Prejudice'? Just for character and narrative? No, because it's a powerful way of saying 'Here's what noble behaviour is' — look for the real and watch out for the sham."
A system based on limited government will lead to anarchy and exploitation of the weak by the strong, in the absence of values outside the legal system which are accepted by the community.
A question frequently posed is: why cannot the working out of a set of values be left to the individual? A system of authoritative moral values is for most people essential for decent and honest conduct. There may be individuals who can work out by themselves a code of conduct. But they will constitute a very small minority in any society. An intelligently worked out code of conduct requires intelligence, intellectual effort and a great deal of personal integrity. It is a common human characteristic to find and rely on reasons to support a position which is in one's own selfish interests and to exclude there from competing reasons and the interests of others where they would lead to a different position. These factors tend to make fair conduct difficult even in the context of a devised authoritative code of morality. It is very difficult for an individual to devise such a code and to put it into practice without constantly catering to his own selfish needs and subjective perspectives.
There is another reason why subjective individual morality should be subordinated to a general code of moral conduct. The subjective morality of different individuals will often conflict with the values of others. A harmoniously ordered society is therefore possible only when all persons are subject to a code of conduct regarding which there is general agreement. However, such a code will be consistent with freedom only if it reflects the accepted general norms and does not seek to control human behaviour in all its details.