Many laws are based on morality:

  Morality: principles concerning the distinction between
  right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Let's say that violence is considered inherently wrong, that's morality. But it's an easily justified stance that allows us to legislate against murder, rape, theft, assault, and other crimes.

But non-violent crimes, then, or those that don't violate property or privacy? Who says you have a right to either of those? On what basis do they justify that position?

Morality and ethics are the very basis of legal frameworks. The question is, what do we consider moral/ethical and what is worth criminal/civil punishment versus social ostracization.

There's obviously a big overlap between ethics and morality. So how do we differentiate the two sources of law? To me, ethics are the result of a process of critical thinking. Morality is inherited and learned based on our peers and culture. In other words it's a case of deductive vs. inductive reasoning.

FWIW, here's another way to characterize the difference between ethics and morality:

Ethics is a set of rules about what one person can do to another person. Is this act harmful to another person?

Morality is a set of rules about what a person can do to their own self. Is this act harmful to me?

AFAIK, Germany and Netherlands have very well established frameworks for prostitution, which includes making sure that their tax withholdings and social security deductions are being made from income, etc. No different from any other job in that sense.

> no place for morality in any modern legal framework

There's definitely a place for morality, but perhaps a better way to put it is that there should be no place for any non-utilitarian morality in any legal framework.

But that's still a moral statement - one that privileges utilitarianism above other philosophies.

No, not really. Utilitarianism has its place, but it always has a lot of flaws that make it very poorly suited as something to basic any legal framework of it.

Like the fact certain types can be used to basically justify anything the majority likes, regardless of whether it's really fair on anyone else. You could argue banning various social and religious views is acceptable as a utilitarian, so long as the majority of the population would be happier with them banned.

These thoughts scare me. Utilitarianism is far from perfect. For instance, would we as a society designate 5% of women as lacking right to their own body and allow any man to have them when he wishes? If the pleasure the men gained is greater than the suffering of the women, utilitarians say yes. And even if you say "No, because the suffering of the women will inevitably be greater," is that REALLY the reason that the action I stated above is wrong? Or is it...that women have a moral right to their body that is not subject to the whims of what is best for society

What you are referring to are "Utility Monster" arguments. I've yet to see a version of the Utility Monster that would actually happen in the real world. The better ones involve a computer that rules the world and is given a metric that seems good, but leads to bad consequences when it is maximized at the expense of everything else. But we aren't ruled by such a computer - we're still ruled by people.

> "No, because the suffering of the women will inevitably be greater" IMO, this is obviously true. Why wouldn't it be the real reason?

> And even if you say "No, because the suffering of the women will inevitably be greater," is that REALLY the reason that the action I stated above is wrong?

Yes, that really is the reason it is wrong. Men aren't utility monsters, the existence (even hypothetically) of utility monsters is doubtful, and it is harmful to optimize a system of morality for situations that have an infinitismal probability of being realized.

utilitarian legal frameworks would allow torturing a suspected terrorist to find out if he actually knows the codes to disarm the ticking time bomb.

is that something you actually support, or am I misinterpreting?

Can you give an example for a moral and useful statute that is outside of a common ethical framework?

what you're thinking is ethic

Most if not all laws are moral statements. Who may kill and when? How much can the government compel someone to pay for general services? What types of business practices are allowable in our society?

All moral questions.

you 're probably talking about moralizing puritanism that ignores human nature, rather than morality.

Possibly. I get the notion that there are very different understandings about what constitutes morality.