Professor Alan Mewett on morality and the criminal law.

This article focuses on Alan Mewett’s influential contributions to Canadian criminal law, particularly his arguments for removing private morality from the regulation of sexual offences. Writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mewett advocated that criminal law should intervene only to prevent demonstrable social harms—such as violence, exploitation, corruption of youth, and violation of others’ rights—rather than enforce moral judgments on private sexual conduct. His proposals included partial decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults and a harm-based framework that anticipated modern understandings of consent, despite retaining some period-specific moral language. Mewett’s work aligned with contemporaneous debates like the Wolfenden report and influenced legal reforms in Canada, offering a foundation for ongoing discussions about the appropriate scope of criminal law in regulating sex and sexuality.