<p>Legal moralism has largely failed to make sense of constraints on criminalization following the public-private distinction of wrongs because it has traditionally been conceived as concerned with the criminalization of all forms of moral wrongdoing. Antony Duff’s modest legal moralism constitutes a notable exception by proposing the civil order theory, according to which only moral wrongs that violate communal values, aims, and practices contained in political communities’ civil orders can count as public wrongs, and be legitimately criminalized. Yet, the precise extent of the constraints imposed by this theory is unclear. Civil orders can embody different acceptable political views, and, hence, constrain criminal law-making differently. While this ability to accommodate pluralism is a virtue of the theory, it remains an open question whether it imposes fundamental limits in criminal law-making that every polity should observe. In this paper, I answer this question affirmatively. A set of basic constraints in criminal law-making follows from the requirement of democratic organization that every polity ought to observe. This requirement gives rise to a procedural distinction between public and private wrongs—namely, the procedural account of public wrongs. According to this account, polities are only allowed to criminalize moral wrongdoing that significantly undermines the autonomy of others and is not necessary for democratic procedures to work appropriately. These constraints are universal, and, as such, mandatory for every political community. Yet, they are complemented by further, parochially defined, elements of civil orders, which narrow down polities’ public realms. In this way, I propose to understand the civil order theory as establishing a double layered set of constraints for criminalization. The first layer of constraints concerns the procedural account of public wrongs, while the second layer of constraints follows from elements of civil orders that extend beyond organizing democracy.</p>