How have successful governments legislated morality?

Question

In what ways has law fostered a culture of clear morality? Are there objective measurements to state what would be beneficial to the people which laws are meant for? I'm very interested in ways that don't create a litany of unmaintainable spider web that, at times, confounds even a seasoned attorney.

Perhaps culture isn't the answer. Perhaps an all-knowing panopticon of artificial intelligence is ideal(though I seriously doubt it). I just risked being specific for the sake of example and to help spark a response.

Any examples of what has worked well in the past would be helpful.

Let's take a specific example for a moral code.

It is wrong to break into a stranger's house and kill them.

So... it sounds pretty cut and dry... but what about war? What if this stranger has built a military base within a city and is pillaging? Now it's illegal to remove his presence with lethal force.

So now it's:

It is wrong to break into a unknown civilian's house and kill them.

That has lots of problems too. It's never going to be perfect.

Let me know if I should delete this question and why. I'll be checking back often. I suck at SE questions. I asked this in SE Law... got two downvotes and was told to ask it here.

Answer 1

I see two interpretations to your question.

1: What are historical examples of how societies have used legal systems to decrease the rate of actions they believed to be immoral?
In this case, you are actually asking about deviance, not morality. I just checked and Stack Exchange does not have a sociology site, but maybe if you went to the psychology site they would helpful. As far as I know, legal systems regulate deviancy simply by punishing people to do deviant acts.

2: If a more complicated legal system will result in better outcomes than a less complicated one, how have legal systems avoided becoming increasingly complex?
The tongue-in-cheek answer is that no examples exist since all modern legal systems are "a litany of unmaintainable spider web that, at times, confounds even a seasoned attorney". A more historically informed answer would be that legal systems that avoid this problem tend to rely on the unilateral power of one individual or a small group, which is undesirable for different reasons.