… is from page 242 of Leland Yeager’s important 2001 book, Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation (citation removed; original emphasis):
Mary Ann Glendon makes much of the failure of law in the United States to impose a legal duty to come to the aid of a person in mortal danger…. Yet one might well regard the nonimposition of a legal duty to give help as an example of humility and restraint on the part of law and government. The absence of a legal requirement does not mean repudiating the moral duty to give help. To suppose it does – more broadly, to suppose that the law determines or at least registers what morality requires – is a tacitly statist notion. Government should not try, with coercion as its ultimate sanction, to enforce everything good and suppress everything bad. Taking on so broad a responsibility would worsen its dangerous aspects.
