Lon Fuller, Strays, & The Delhi Feeding Ban

Can law remain meaningful if it suppresses morality? When law usurps moral duty, do we still call it justice — or tyranny dressed in statute?

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Delhi–NCR banning feeding of stray dogs outside designated zones is precisely where law and morality clash. At stake is not just the fate of dogs, but the integrity of law itself.

Lon Fuller’s Internal Morality of Law

Fuller, a towering modern legal philosopher, argued against the rigidity of legal positivism. In The Morality of Law, he asserted that any legal system must satisfy essential criteria — the “internal morality of law” — to be truly just. These principles include:

• Law must be general
• Law must be publicly promulgated
• Law must be prospective, not retroactive
• Law must be intelligible
• Law must be consistent
• Law must not demand the impossible
• Law must be stable
• Law must align declared rules with official actions. 

To Fuller, divorcing legal validity from moral dimensions turns law into mere power.

Delhi's Feeding Ban Fails Fuller’s Test

Let’s analyze the Supreme Court’s judgment through the lens of Fuller’s criteria:

1. Intelligibility
   In theory, "no feeding outside zones" sounds clear. But in practice, zones are arbitrarily mapped, and dogs — territorial by nature — do not align with municipal boundaries. Law becomes unintelligible to both dogs and feeders.
    
2. Not Demanding the Impossible
   The court’s approach expects dog lovers to feed only in zones, regardless of the dog’s location. This is impossible if dogs don’t move to meet these zones. The law thereby demands the impossible.
    
3. Consistency & Stability
   Legal brutality in enforcing feeding regulations conflicts with constitutional duty (Article 51A(g)). Compassion, once a guiding principle, is now restricted — destroying consistency between law and moral duty.
    
4. Alignment of Rule and Action
   The law’s declared intent — to ensure public order — is at odds with its execution, which suppresses civic compassion and undermines community trust. Officials may legally enforce the rule; morally they violate lived ethics.

By Fuller’s standard, such a ruling is not law — it is raw power clothed in legal language.

Fuller vs. Delhi Stray Ruling

 
Consequences When Law Divorces Morality

1. Erosion of Legitimacy
   Citizens see moral acts criminalized (feeding strays), and legal acts rendered heartless. Law loses its legitimacy as a guide for community ethics.
    
2. Social Trust Undermined
   Humans are asked to ignore moral impulses in favor of bureaucratic boundaries. Compassion becomes institutionalized restraint—not civic virtue.
    
3. Judicial Hypocrisy
   The court’s own precedent (recognizing moral duties in Article 51A(g)) becomes irrelevant. Law is selectively moral — an optics-driven moralism rather than a lived reality.

What Fuller Would Advise

Fuller's vision of law demands a marriage with morality. In this context:

• The feeding regulation should be reinterpreted as permissive rather than punitive. Let moral duty guide public feeding — particularly within dogs’ natural territories.
   
• Lawmakers should co-opt community feeders as partners, rather than shun them.
   
• Regulations must be adaptable and humane, aligned with local ecology and civic values — rather than imposed from above.

When law severs its tie to morality — when it forbids feeding of dogs out of compassion — it fails to be law in Fuller’s principled sense. This Supreme Court judgment should not stand as moral progress; rather, it is a cautionary moment. Law must not be divorced from conscience — else we rule by edict, not by justice.

Law without morality is power without legitimacy. Fuller’s test reveals why the Delhi stray ruling erodes justice.