The relationship between law and morality is an eternal theme and mystery in the philosophy of law. Law and morality are as inseparable as two wheels of a car and two wings of a bird. Morality emphasizes that people's moral concepts are cast into law, while law emphasizes that law internalizes people's quality and morality. Law and morality belong to different categories of superstructure. Law belongs to the category of system; Morality belongs to the category of social ideology The contents of legal norms are mainly rights and obligations, emphasizing the balance between them; Morality emphasizes fulfilling obligations and being responsible to others and social collectives. The structure of legal norms is hypothesis, handling and sanctions or behavior patterns and legal consequences; Morality has no specific sanctions or legal consequences. The implementation of the law is guaranteed by the state's coercive force; Morality mainly depends on public opinion, people's inner thoughts, publicity and education, and public condemnation. Laws are formulated in accordance with specific procedures, which are mainly manifested in various normative documents formulated by relevant state organs or special circumstances; Morality is usually subtle. Law will inevitably go through a process from emergence to extinction, and eventually it will be replaced by morality, and people will implement their own behavior by virtue of their own moral concepts. 1. Theoretical significance of morality and law: 1. The meaning of morality: From the perspective of historical materialism, morality is rooted in certain material living conditions. Engels said: "All previous moral theories are, in the final analysis, the products of social and economic conditions at that time. Society is still advancing in class opposition until now, so morality is always class morality. " This shows that the content of morality is ultimately determined by economic conditions and changes accordingly with the development of economy; Different social groups based on different material living conditions have different moral concepts, and the morality of class society has class nature. Therefore, we can simply summarize morality as follows: morality is the sum total of the thoughts, principles and norms of natural people living under certain material living conditions, such as good and evil, honor and shame, justice and injustice, justice and prejudice, barbarism and modesty, or a comprehensive system of contradictions and unity. (2) The meaning of law closely related to morality. There is no eternal morality and no eternal law. In today's society, ruling groups representing different interests still exist, but the class interests they represent are fundamentally different or antagonistic. Different ruling groups have their own class interests and morals suitable for their class interests. In essence, the law is that the overall will of the ruling group rises to the will of the state. Since law is the embodiment of will, and morality certainly belongs to the category of will, then law certainly reflects the morality of the ruling class. From the perspective of morality, we can define law as: subjectively, law is the embodiment of the will of the state and the will of the ruling class; Objectively speaking, the content of law is determined by certain social and material living conditions. The former embodies the national will and the ruling class will of the law, while the latter embodies the material constraints of the law. Law is the contradictory unity of these two aspects. Combined with China's national conditions, China's legal and moral situation: 1. The law and morality of the ruling class within a country are the embodiment of the overall will of the ruling class. 2. The law and morality of the ruling class permeate each other. Loyalty, filial piety and chastity are the moral norms of China feudal dynasty to maintain its class rule, which are embodied in its legislation as "ten evils". In judicial practice, even Confucianism is used as the basis for handling cases, and the book Chunqiu Judgment is one of the typical examples. 3. Law and morality complement each other and serve the overall interests of the ruling class. Mencius said in "Leaving the Upstairs" that "practice is not enough" and it needs the cooperation of other means, among which practice is an important means. 4. Moral condition restricts the development of legislation. Morality plays an important role in promoting the implementation of the law. 6. Morality helps to fill the vacuum of legal adjustment. 7. Law must be based on morality. 8. Law is an effective means to spread morality. Second, the dialectical relationship between morality and law (1) Morality and law are two main forms of social norms, which are both different and related. The difference between them can at least be summarized as: 1. The conditions are different. In primitive society, there were no laws in the modern sense, only moral norms or religious taboos, or clan habits. Law came into being at the end of primitive society, accompanied by the disintegration of clan system and the emergence of private ownership and class. The generation of morality is synchronous with the formation of human society. Morality is the most basic normative system to maintain a society. Without ethics, the whole society will fall apart. 2. Different forms of expression. Law is a code of conduct formulated or recognized by the state, with clear content, which is usually expressed in the form of various legal sources, such as national statute law, customary law, case law and so on. The content of moral norms exists in people's consciousness and is expressed through people's words and deeds. It generally does not resort to words, and its content is principled and abstract. 3. The adjustment range is different. From a deeper perspective, morality not only adjusts people's external behavior, but also adjusts people's motives and internal activities. It requires people to act according to noble intentions and pursue goodness for the sake of goodness. Although the law also considers people's subjective fault, if there is no illegal act, the law does not punish the subjective fault itself, that is, there is no "ideological crime"; In breadth, legal adjustment is generally moral adjustment. Of course, there are also some legal areas that hardly include any moral judgment, such as special procedure rules, circulation rules of bills, and organizational rules of the government. In these fields, the guiding concept of law is convenience and efficiency, not morality. 4. The action mechanism is different. The law is enforced by the state's coercive force; Morality is mainly maintained by the power of public opinion and tradition and people's self-discipline. 5. The content is different. The content of law is rights and obligations, which generally require equality. Without rights, there is no obligation, and without obligations, there is no right. Morality generally only stipulates obligations and does not require equal rights. For example, in the face of a drowning person, morality requires you to have the obligation to save people, but it does not give you the right to claim compensation from him. It is usually considered immoral to ask for remuneration from the rescued drowning person. (2) Morality and law are interrelated. They all belong to the superstructure and serve a certain economic base. They are two important means of social regulation. Since mankind entered a civilized society, any society has to resort to these two means at the same time when establishing and maintaining order, but this is only biased. The two complement each other, promote each other and promote each other. The relationship is as follows: 1. Law is an effective means to spread morality. Morality can be divided into two categories: the first category is the morality required by social order, that is, the "minimum morality" indispensable for social maintenance, such as not harming others by violence, seeking benefits by fraudulent means, and not endangering public safety; The second category includes those principles that help to improve the quality of life and enhance the close relationship between people, such as fraternity and selflessness. Among them, the first morality usually rises to law and can be implemented through sanctions or rewards. The second kind of morality is a kind of morality with higher requirements, which is generally not suitable to be transformed into law, otherwise it will confuse law and morality, and the result is that "law will be illegal and morality will be immoral". [1] The implementation of the law itself is a process of punishing evil and promoting good, which not only contributes to the formation of people's legal consciousness, but also contributes to the cultivation of people's morality. Because the law, as a national evaluation, has a unified standard for what it advocates and what it opposes; The evaluation criteria contained in the law are consistent with or close to the most basic moral beliefs of most citizens, so the implementation of the law has played an important role in the formation and popularization of social morality. 2. Morality is the evaluation standard and driving force of law and a useful supplement to law. First of all, the law should contain the minimum morality. A law without moral foundation is a kind of "evil law" and cannot be respected and consciously observed by people. Second, morality can guarantee the implementation of the law. "It is not good for politics, and it is not good for yourself." The improvement of the professional ethics of law enforcers and the enhancement of the legal consciousness and moral concept of law-abiding people all play a positive role in the implementation of the law. Third, morality is complementary to law. Some should not be adjusted by law, or should be adjusted by law, but due to the lag of legislation, moral adjustment has played a supplementary role. 3. Morality and law will be transformed into each other in some cases. With the development of society, some morals have gradually emerged, which are considered to be very important to society and in danger of being frequently violated, and legislators may bring them into the scope of law. On the contrary, some behaviors that were regarded as immoral in the past and therefore need to be prohibited by law may quit the legal field and turn to moral adjustment. In short, law and morality are different from each other, irreplaceable, confusing and can not be ignored, so a single rule of law model or a single rule of virtue model inevitably has defects; At the same time, law and morality are interrelated and complementary in function, and they are both important means of social adjustment, which makes it possible to rule by virtue and rule by law.