K otázce utváření vztahu práva, morálky a náboženství od minulosti k dnešku

Throughout the centuries, law, morality and religion – the three essential normative systems operating in society – have substantially changed their relations and proportions. While at the dawn of human civilisation, they represented a single whole, in later periods the three systems co-existed concurrently, though not entirely separate one from another. They shared a lot of common aspects. These consisted (a) in their regulatory role in the society, and (b) in shared elements in their contents or – put in other words – overlapping, as well as (c) the mode of their operation in the society, and (d) the guarantees provided (currently these rest particularly in the associated ethos of human rights). It was after the modem society was born that the proportion of the three systems changed alongside other processes occurring in the society (especially the process of individualisation from which all other developments resulted). Following many historical events, law and morality emancipated from religion which, over centuries, had been a source for the former systems. Law ceased to be a safeguard of uniform religious world opinion. As a result of disintegration of traditional social structures and the continuing differentiation in the society (accompanied by other impacts), the relationship between law and morality was somewhat modified. Law turned to be a universal regulator in the society and a guarantor of its integrity. Morality, on the other hand, lost its general applicability, the internal link between the two, however, continuing. All these facts make increased demands on law and they are, coupled with some new problems that law has to cope with (e.g. changes resulting from the scientific and technological progress, shifts in the moral views in the society, disintegrating impact of postmodernism, etc.). In some countries, the position of law is also made difficult by the “heritage” of the communist era which especially rests in lack of confidence placed by people in law and a number of week points to be traced in the law-making process as well as in application and enforcement of law.