Owen (1957) the court considered the definition of a crime to be: Crimes range broadly from something as simple as traffic violations to actions as serious as murder. However, this definition doesn't offer us any explanation as to why a type of lawbreaking is considered criminal whereas other lawbreaking is not. Technically a crime is a violation of criminal law. As we shall see, the perception that vice motivates these sorts of behaviors is, in large part, why these behaviors are such contentious legal issues. For instance, the vices of greed, anger, and lust lead to gambling, hate speech, and pornography. Each of these issues relates to vice as it is said to be vice which leads to each of these things. In this course we will be looking at several issues including gambling, hate speech, pornography, and drug use.
If we took away Bob's vice, then he would be able to resist the urge to smoke cigarettes. So what would be the vice which leads Bob to the act of smoking? Most likely the vice is Bob's “weakness of will.” Bob's statement is an admission of a character flaw (weakness of will) which leads him to smoke even when he realizes he shouldn't. Smoking may be a symptom of vice, but it is not itself a vice. For instance, Bob might say “smoking is my biggest vice.” Yet, smoking is an action, not a character trait. This confusion arises in our use of ordinary language. One confusion which should be addressed is that a vice is not an action. Much of this language is also employed in a religious context where it is said that there are “seven deadly sins” or vices and “seven heavenly virtues.” Wherever our familiarity with virtues and vices comes from what is in general agreement is that vices are character traits that we want to avoid and virtues are character traits that we should want to promote or cultivate. The language of virtue and vice goes back at least to the ancient Greeks who, as we will see later, spent a great deal writing about them. By comparison we can list some virtues including loyalty, bravery, honesty, compassion, humility, generosity and temperance. Each of these is a character trait we find in people which is, on the whole, undesirable. Some of the most commonly referred to vices include greed, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, pride, and sloth (laziness). For example, honesty is a virtue and dishonesty is a vice. The opposite of a vice is a virtue, which is a good or desirable character trait. A vice is a bad or undesirable character trait.
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