MG,
Among the many things I am not is ethicist. However...
wsieber has proposed as one ethical principle the need for approval. By grounding our ethical sense in a specifically (lit erally) infantile need for approval, he suggests a behavioralist theory of ethics, an ethical sense established throught positive and negative reinforcement. I agree (without promising to supply others) that this is probably one component of a theory of ethics.
Your examples seem to reflect an interest in what is legal, but law is not necessarilly analogous with ethics. In fact, as the *your statement* of you examples suggest, law is subject to examination on ethical principles.
It might be useful, then, to distinguish between right as in "good," and right as in entitlement. One might argue, on moral grounds, that it is wrong to smoke. But this must be distinguished from the legal right to do so. The limit of the legal entitlement *may* be determined where there is a conflict of rights, or entitlements: my right to smoke vs. your right not to be subjected the harmful by-product of my activity. While we may argue about the limitation imposed on one or the other of us in terms of ethical principles (e.g., the increase of the Good), the determination of the legal right either occupies a special part of ethics, or may be determined without reference to the general good. It may be determined by the much more limited good of profit to a small minority of individuals.
It seems to me that the distinction between law and ethics is central to the constitutional project of the United States, both reflecting its idealism and delimiting the conflicts of the citizens of this country: communities with different ethical systems (which, broadly speaking, are systems of social organization around (a) common good(s)) are both force to respect the right of each to exist, and to contend with each other under a single *legal* system, which forms an more general (and generalizing) ethical or constitutional system. Law, then, is gradually elevated to the level of an ethical system and replaces it. But law cannot satisfy the needs of people for sustenance, gratification, and pleasure.
So we've got a problem.
