ABSTRACT

The shift from the world of moralism, one based on the principle that the main purpose of policy is to reward the virtuous, protect the innocent, and penalize the wicked, to the world of causalism in which the purpose of policy is to minimize harm in aggregate regardless of dessert was a process that can be said to have begun towards the end of the nineteenth century (Wiener 1990: 338). The ideas on which causalism is based were far from new even then, but it is at this time that we can see them start significantly to replace moralism. Moralism assumed the existence of the autonomous and responsible individual freely choosing between modes of conduct. Causalism, by contrast, assumed that the actions of individuals were to a large extent caused by their circumstances. It was a change that coincided with and probably influenced the first turning point in the U-curve of deviance, when the zeal of reforming Britain ran out, leaving an

apparently stable and at first complacent and confident but later uneasy and crumbling respectable Britain. However, the main or at least most spectacular shift towards causalism occurred in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. In this chapter, this later shift will be examined in detail and particularly in relation to four major legal changes that took place at that time, none of which have ever been reversed or even seriously challenged, namely (1) the abolition of capital punishment in stages in 1957 and 1965; (2) the liberalization of the law on abortion in 1967; (3) the reform of the divorce laws in 1969; and (4) the decriminalization of male homosexual behavior in 1967. There are many other legal changes to which the same analysis can be applied, such as the relaxation of several kinds of censorship in Britain (Davies 1978: 9-36) or the extension in 1959 of the possibility of legitimation by subsequent marriage to the case where the partner had not been free to marry at the time of the birth of a child because he or she was married to someone else (Davies 1980: 936), but these four examples best illustrate the decisive move to causalism that took place.