What percentage of social support for a law is needed?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Putting someone in jail is a big deal. A decent society can jail a person for a clear and overwhelming threat to public safety or, rarely, the public good but not for a mere difference of opinion.

What percentage of us think that murder should be a criminal offense?

Presumably close to 100%. Our criminal laws typically have near universal support, as one would expect in any enlightened democracy. People hate taxes but at least 90% think tax cheats should face criminal sanction.

Now, at what point of lower public support for a law does the law become a grotesque over-reach of government?

The existence of criminal laws that are opposed by the majority of the populace marks a state as a tyranny. (Peasants didn't like English game laws forbidding hunting on aristocratic land, which was almost all of it. But the peasants weren't really asked. God knows what the Russian people thought of the Beatles being outlawed in the USSR while they were easily the most popular musical act in the USSR.)

Can we really imprison people for an act so ambiguously wrong that 25% of the population believe it should be legal?

How about 35%?

More?

How about 46%? Should 50% be able to criminalize the behavior of 46%? That seems wildly at odds with the basic concept of our form of government.

I submit that no civilized society can imprison human beings for being on the wrong side of a 4% difference in public opinion.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

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[TheKentuckian]

2. A difference in opinion on personal consumption of a natural substance

Pretty goofy, akin to making a food illegal because a lot of people dislike brussel sprouts or beets.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. ...