10. R.P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (3rd edition 1998), at 9Google Scholar. Although Wolff appears to be the modern source of the standard view, his influence came from the work of Joseph Raz, who explicitly accepts Wolff`s view of obeying the law as “essentially sound.” See Raz, The Authority of Law (1979), p. 11, and his introduction to the collection of essays in Authority (Raz, Joseph ed., 1990), pp. 1-19Google Scholar. See also Regan, Donald, Reasons, Authority, and the Meaning of `Obey`: Further Thoughts on Raz and Obedience to Law, 3 Can. J. L. & Juris. 3 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4. See Hershovitz, Scott, The Authority of Law, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law 65–75 (Marble, A. ed., 2012)Google Scholar, for the only critical review of the standard view. Some recent work in philosophy of law claims to clarify what it means to obey the law, if only to compare it to other possible reactions to the law, but in each case it turns out that the explanandum is something else. For example, William Edmundson contrasts obedience to the law with “law-abiding,” even though he does not explain either concept; He says that complying with the law partly means “obeying it,” but the concept of compliance remains unexplained. In terms of obedience to the law, it oscillates between what I call (below) conformity to reason and views of conformity to reason. See Edmundson, William, The Virtue of Law-Abidance, 4 Philosophers` Imprint 1, 2–3 (2006)Google Scholar. Another example is Fred Schauer, who suggests in his recent book addressing questions such as “What exactly does it mean to follow or obey the law?” and “Is every act in accordance with the law also an act of obedience to the law?”, The Force of Law (2015), at 6, questions that are indeed central to this essay. In the end, however, without argument, Id. at 194 n.18, he adopts the “conventional” view of obedience to the law, which is exactly the standard view I criticize below.
Finally, Margaret Gilbert acknowledges that the default view is inadequate, but does not suggest which account it should override. See A Theory of Political Obligation (2006), pp. 210-211. Dangerous offender legislation is an excellent example of the benefits of rehabilitation. Its goal is to keep anyone deemed a dangerous offender, usually the sickest, most sadistic and twisted criminals, in prison until they show psychological improvement, regardless of their punishment. A third purpose of the law is to deter individuals from committing crimes. That is, ordinary citizens will realize that there are severe penalties for committing a crime and that it is very common to get caught, and therefore decide that committing a crime is too risky and will not commit it. Combined with standard arrest rates, harsh penalties are needed to effectively deter potential criminals. And yet, McManus must understand that the reasons for civil disobedience must be carefully weighed. It is a condition of true civil disobedience – as Martin Luther King so eloquently argued in his “Letter from a Birmingham Prison” – that you must be prepared to bear the consequences of disobedience to the law in the hope of changing the opinions of your fellow citizens. You must take the common good to heart and not just your own special interests. Socrates was ready to die for his city.
Martin Luther King was imprisoned and eventually murdered. These may be the extreme cases. But it speaks to the dilemma of how free societies handle deep disagreements, including about the nature of injustice. It is not yet clear how far CUTA would be willing to go. Moral responsibility: The personal obligations that people feel because of their beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. 44. See the many historical examples in The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) by Gene Sharp, pp. 303-319 www.directaction.org/handbook/. 40. See Randolph Clarke, Omissions (2014), p. 68, and the examples he discusses therein. 1.
The inattention started early. In the founding text of the literature on political obligations, Plato`s Krito, Socrates demands that the laws of Athens “convince or obey” the laws (51a-52e), but no characterization of either alternative is given. The issue is further complicated by the fact that the terms “persuade” and “obey” in Plato`s Greek have a common verbal root (peithein), so the active voice is used to express the first idea, and the passive voice the second. Socrates also speaks of doing what the law commands (poeteon ha an keleuei, at 51b), but relies on his audience`s intuitive understanding of what this phrase is supposed to mean. For a discussion, see Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (1984), pp. 54-114. Modern contributions to literature do no better, even if an author`s stated goal is to identify the problem. See, for example, Wolff, Jonathan, What Is the Problem of Political Obligation?, 91 Proc. Aristotelian Soc. 153 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who takes obedience as a central concern but never pays attention to saying what it is.
More recently, William Edmundson, in a review of the literature on obedience, spends several pages characterizing the duty under discussion, but then establishes in a single sentence what is to be understood by obedience to the law. He calls this provision an “idiomatic point”, although, as I argue below, it involves substantial theoretical obligations that have rarely been questioned. See Edmundson, State of the Art: The Duty to Obey the Law, 10 Legal Theory 215, 217 (2004)Google Scholar. David Lefkowitz makes the same determination in his review of the same literature, but strangely enough as an explanation of duty, not as an account of obedience itself. See Lefkowitz, The Duty to Obey the Law, 1 phil. Compass 571, 572–573 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whenever possible, arrange opportunities for your children to interact with law enforcement officials. For example, you can arrange a visit to the nearest police station, where your children can spend time with an officer who is willing to talk to them about the importance of laws. It will also help them understand the seriousness of the work of these officials. 18.
John Austin places the concept of obedience at the centre of his presentation of sovereignty, that is, as a person or persons to whom the political community habitually obeys and obeys no one, which in turn constitutes an essential part of his legal theory. He explicitly supports the justification of the conforming view of obedience in The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Rumble, Wilfrid E. ed., 1995), pp. 248-249Google Scholar, where he asserts that acts of obedience, while “voluntary or free,” may be for “reasons of one description or another.” H.L.A. Hart follows Austin in The Concept of Law (Raz, Joseph and Bulloch, Penelope A. eds., 3d ed. 2012)Google Scholar, where he asserts that citizens can obey the law for “a variety of different reasons,” Id. at 114, and “for any reason of anything,” Id. at 116. Himma argues that Hart “exaggerates” the extent to which obedience is necessary for the existence of a legal system, but the criticism is based on the false attribution to Hart of the reason for conformity (RC) of obedience. See Himma, Kenneth Einar, A Comprehensive Hartian Theory of Legal Obligation: Social Pressure, Coercive Enforcement, and the Legal Obligations of Citizens, in Philosophical Foundations of the Nature of Law (Waluchow, Wil & Sciaraffa, Stefan eds., 2013), at 175-176Google Scholar. Much later, and under the influence of Raz, Hart defended something like the view of reasoning in Essays on Bentham (1982).
LGBTQI people are a particular object of discrimination. Dissenting judges in same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, urged the protection of anti-homosexual conscience. In the next term, the Supreme Court will hear a case, Fulton v. Philadelphia, where Philadelphia refused to fund Catholic adoption agencies because they discriminated against same-sex couples in child placement. Philadelphia rightly wants the same anti-discrimination laws to apply to everyone. The religious freedom demanded in this case gives Catholics the opportunity to win a case in which Smith is overthrown, and they earn the right to determine the law in their own way, rather than obey the law as it is. Children are socialized from an early age to obey the law.