[coderenegade]

It's definitely not. The law is not, and never has been, a moral bar. A healthy legal system requires laws to be able to change over time to reflect society, and sometimes this requires that people be able to break the law.

[SiempreViernes]

Sure sure, there are unjust laws whose upholding isn't good, but this are the exceptions allowed for by using "in general" as opposed to "always".

[coderenegade]

1) The only difference between a just law and an unjust law is time. I have family members who needed to wear dog tags to drink in certain pubs because of the colour of their skin, and I'm not old. And yet such laws were widely supported (for various reasons) for a long time.

2) lazy governments often apply sweeping blanket bans and fall back to police discretion. Carrying a hammer? Technically illegal in my home country, and the police can stop you. Whether or not they have have reasonable cause to charge you is a different matter. If you look like a tradesman you probably won't be bothered, but if you don't, you're breaking the law.

3) Laws can be mutually contradictory until legally tested and a precedent is set. If you're unlucky, you could be the one who has to test it. Regulations are notorious for this.

I'm not saying that we don't want to enforce laws, because generally we do. But when and how laws are enforced requires nuance. And certainly the idea that always enforcing them is a net good is very, very far from the historical reality.

[foldr]

>> the exceptions allowed for by using "in general" as opposed to "always".

> I'm not saying that we don't want to enforce laws, because generally we do

You are in ageeement.

[coderenegade]

No, because the thread is about preventing crimes before they happen, and asserting that this is unquestionably good and an unambiguous moral position. It isn't, even if we accept that widespread enforcement of the law is generally something that we want.

[foldr]

I think the point is that preventative action against crime is unquestionably good to about the same extent that enforcing the law is unquestionably good. In both cases there are exceptions, but few would question that it’s a good thing to do in general.

[3form]

This is all nice for as long there are just _some_ unjust laws, but the means of such enforcement will inevitably be exploited by actually evil people, who given such tool will get you many, many more unjust laws not worth upholding.