Mala prohibita, on the other hand, consist in conduct that is not wrongful independently of the law that prohibits it: if they are wrong, their wrongfulness depends essentially on their illegality.
(This leaves open the question of whether the criminal law can create wrongs, or whether it rather gives formal recognition to wrongs whose wrongfulness is initially determined by extra-legal standards).
The four subsections here (on responsibility under coercion, the wrongfulness of coercion, its effect on freedom, and its political implications) overlap in a number of ways, so divisions among these sections are somewhat artificial.
Still, one might argue that the concept of indirect discrimination is problematic because its use mistakenly presupposes that the wrongfulness of discrimination can lie ultimately in its effects on social groups.
There is an additional point that needs to be made in connection with the wrongfulness of discrimination in its moralized sense.
(1985: 66) The eighth view, along with the accounts of Hellman and Shin, rest on the intuitively attractive idea that the wrongfulness of direct discrimination is tied to its denial of the equal moral status of persons.
"Wrong" and "harm" are separate concepts, Gladwell says, and "wrongfulness is not contingent on harmfulness".
On those definitions of "unnatural" that make human intervention sufficient for unnaturalness, the view that unnaturalness is sufficient for wrongfulness would entail the even more outlandish conclusion that everything humans do is wrong.
