Rules detrimental to morality?

A recent Telegraph opinion piece by philosopher A C Grayling claims - in the context of the Westminster expenses scandal - that the decline in public morality is due to society's move from living by personal principle to a system of rules and regulations, which are then manipulated, pushed-against and broken. But his case is perhaps undermined by his cricket analogy: Grayling says batsmen won't 'walk' now even when they know they're 'out'. Instead, they wait for the umpire's finger, and thus adhere to the letter rather than spirit of the rules.

But the rules of cricket have not changed fundamentally - it's the attitude towards them that's now different. By the same token, the essential tenets of the criminal law have remained largely unchanged, while the average individual's propensity to breach those laws has clearly increased.

Rather than a rules-based culture being detrimental to morality, it's arguably things like the rights-based culture from the liberal left and individualism on the libertarian right that have led to a lack of respect for rules and laws.

Somewhat ironically the left has tried to address the consequent decline in respect for the law - and the increasing complexity of modern society - by attempting significantly more micro-management, but this is arguably ineffectual, and indeed counter-productive, against an increasingly dominant anti-law ethos.