[Schultzy]

>"How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.

The problem with that line of thinking is that there is no universally accepted, objective standard of what defines a just and unjust law. Do we make those decisions based on Natural Law? How about on the teachings of Mohammed? Jesus? etc.

Making statements about the moral justice of a government's laws has to appeal to some higher moral standard and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of unity in that realm of the discussion. So what you consider to be a "just law" another might believe to be unjust, because their moral presuppositions are completely different.

[scythe]

>The problem with that line of thinking is that there is no universally accepted, objective standard of what defines a just and unjust law. Do we make those decisions based on Natural Law? How about on the teachings of Mohammed? Jesus? etc.

Everything every human does is solely their reaction to their perception. It is as possible to misperceive the law itself as it is to differ on ethical reality; this is irrelevant to the reasoning of any individual. The law is a fluid entity, created by humans, and it is obviously incomplete as evidenced by the fact that we keep modifying it. Furthermore, some notion of ethics has to exist in order to create any law at all.

There is a large body of work in the field of ethics, and it is not really unreasonable for most people to try to understand it. While many philosophers disagree on particulars or even the entire foundation, there are many common elements in the philosophy of people as different as Kant and Nietzsche.

So yes, you have to react to what you consider to be a just law, just as you have to react to what you consider to be the law -- how many people do you know who actually know the law? In practice, this does not usually lead to much difficulty, if all of the participants agree to use at least a little logic.

The best analogy I can come up with is language -- everyone speaks their own version of language (even when everyone is speaking the "same language), and if the rules are codified anywhere it is inevitably a tiny subset of the language that is actually used. Despite this, human communication has been quite successful over the past several millenia.

[caf]

This is ultimately the responsibility of every person, to decide what actions are just and unjust and act accordingly. Yes, it's hard, and there is no universally accepted objective standard - but tough, you don't get a free pass anyway.

Feel free to take guidance wherever you find it - from the principles of the law itself, from your peers, your family, your elders. But consider Nuremburg, and consider the Milgram Experiment: ultimately the responsibility is yours, and cannot be shirked.