Morality, Justice, and the Law

What is legal may not be moral; what is moral may not be legal. Justice may not be fairness. What are your thoughts?

Interesting to raise this question as the Schiavo case continues to receive publicity for all the wrong reasons. Law and justice are never the same, but lately they seem not to be on speaking terms. Perhaps the Greeks had it right. There can be no real law without underlying moral legitimacy (natural law theory), but we seem to prefer the positivist conjunction of law with brutal power. Being an American, I think I will stay with Justice Holmes' legal realism. Holmes came up with the "bad man's" theory of law. "If I were a bad man," said Holmes, "I should wish to know not what the books say, but what will happen to me in fact if I am apprehended." For him, as a realist, morality had nothing to do with the essence of law, which was all about what the judge had for lunch on the day you came before him or her.