Whether the law should regulate immorality, and not just harmful behavior, is the issue about whether legal moralism is defensible. A classical liberal view (sometimes associated with John Stuart Mill) is that liberty may be restricted to prevent harm, but not to enforce morality as such. In evaluating legal moralism, one important question is what would count as harmless immorality. Legal moralism used to be debated about whether the state should prohibit pornography or homosexuality. But, of course, it is questionable whether pornography or homosexuality is per se immoral. You mention the case of infidelity. It’s an interesting question whether infidelity causes harm. One might think so, in which case it presents questions of harm prevention, as well as legal moralism. Most would agree that it is immoral, but many liberals would deny that the state should regulate. A clearer case of harmless wrongdoing might be a case in which a minor promise is broken but with no ill effect or someone borrows...

For starters, there are different practical questions in this area -- one question is whether the state should find MJ guilty and punish; a different question is what any of us should believe about MJ and what reactive attitudes, if any, to adopt toward him. Since these are quite different practical questions, involving different actors and different actions, there's no reason to assume that the failure of the legal case against him implies that it would be inappropriate for individuals to blame him. Even if the legal and moral questions were not separate, one could still blame on the ground that one thought the legal issue had been mistakenly decided. I think that his was a legitimate reaction to OJ Simpson's acquittal. That seemed like a fairly blatant miscarriage of justice, and so there seemed no reason for variou private individuals to refrain from personal blame. Not having followed the MJ case, I have no idea if his acquittal was similarly suspect. But one needn't think the acquittal...