It got from something what would've gotten somebody onto pitchforks upon a first sight, to long and arduous arguing about textual meaning of laws, rather than long, and arduous moral judgement of early Greco-Roman trials
Source, unfortunately lacking references in some places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_laws_of_India
If you want to appeal to a “crime” beyond what people decide is wrong, you are starting to smuggle in an objective moral standard. I think that is hard without appealing to a God or gods.
You know, people used to do so.
Even without that, the loss of objective examination of a fault as a key discerning factor for a justice system was to the detriment of justice.
This leads to a situation when even supreme court judges of countries are being confused by hundreds of contradictory laws of modern legal systems, and can not simply say what is the overall meaning of the law on a given subject without spending hours on research, and writing a lengthy opinion.
100% true. American corporations, and businessmen who collaborated with NSDAP in jew gassing "because it was the law," well, just did what they did. It made them genocide collaborators, and criminals regardless if they did it under the law, or not.
As ancient Romans were saying "a crime can be a tiny stone in a bag of flour."
Slavery is a crime, even if it is not unlawful in a last few countries practicing it.
People who go rape children in places, where, well, child rape is not illegal are committing a crime.
Dotcoms who go play ball with criminal states, which make a crime lawful under a law, claiming "we just follow the law!" even if the law itself is criminal, are just as decidedly criminal.
A crime can not be made less criminal under a law for sane person's moral judgement. I would say, a crime that was legislated, makes it an even bigger crime.
A word crime in a sense as a fault, as something objectively morally reprehensible itself underlines that a wrongdoing is discerned through a thorough judgement rejecting anything that is made to hide, "wrap around," or divert focus from the original fault.