Is it always morally wrong to violate a law and in doing so does one necessarily act badly? I argue that whether in breaking a law one acts badly depends on considerations unique to the particular act of lawbreaking. The moral judgment in question is deeply contextual and cannot be settled by appeal to blanket moral rules such as that it is wrong to break (any) law. The argument is made by focusing on the example of a runner (...) having to decide whether to disobey the law against trespass. If in trespassing one acts badly it is not because there is a prima facie moral obligation to obey law. Theories of political obligation which ground an obligation to obey law in the principles of fairness or gratitude or in consent all fail to provide a persuasive reason not to trespass given a particular fact situation. I argue that when it is morally wrong to trespass it is morally wrong not because one has broken the law, but because and insofar as one has violated reasonable expectations of privacy. Whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's property depends in part on the character of the property in question. (shrink)

The question of (prima facie) formal moral obligation to obey the law remains a perennial in the garden of philosophy. In this paper I consider two recent attempts to dig it up by the roots. The first attempt to settle the question of formal moral obligation to obey the law I shall consider here appeared in the Yale Law Review almost a decade ago. Its author, M. B. E. Smith, argued that there is no (...) such obligation. The article has since been reprinted in a number of popular philosophical anthologies. Hyman Gross has described it as one of "the two most influential works on the morality of civil disobedience." 2 The argument has, as far as I can tell, not been criticized in print. The other attempt to answer that perennial question appeared in Bernard Gert's The Moral Rules (originally published seven years before Smith's article). Gert argued that there is a formal moral obligation to obey the law. Gert's book seems to have received little attention from philosophers. His argument for obligation to obey the law has, as far as I can tell, received no attention at all. Even Smith said nothing about it. The argument seems to have fallen into that silence all writers fear. Yet, it seems to me, Gert has the better answer. (shrink)

This essay argues that there can be a duty to obey the law when it is produced by the evolutionary forces at work in the customary and common law. Human beings' inherent epistemic limitations mean that they must rely on the trial and error learning built into the common law process to discover rules that facilitate peaceful social interaction. Hence, a duty to obey the law produced by the common law process can arise from individuals' natural duty to (...) promote social peace. This argument cannot be extended to ground political obligation. It does not give rise to a duty to obey the state. (shrink)

Kent Greenawalt, Conflicts of Law and Morality New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; xii, 383pp.

Though consequentialist theories of political obligation have been widely criticized in recent years, a series of arguments presented by Derek Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, are now believed to have given this position new life.

The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair (...) share of the communal samaritan chore of rescuing our compatriots from the perils of the state of nature. Simmons counters that this, and all other attempts to explain our duty to obey the law, fail. He defends a position of philosophical anarchism, the view that no existing state is legitimate and that there is no strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, or compliance with, any existing state. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Prima Facie Duty to Obey: A Brief History Implications of Catechistic Metaethics for the Duty of Obedience Implications of Commonalist Metaethics for the Duty of Obedience Conclusion References.

The damaging effects of the activities of corporations on the natural environment have given rise to the need to evaluate corporate policies, decisions, and actions affecting the natural environment on moral grounds. There are two important questions that need to be addressed in this regard. The first is whether corporations have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, which is over and above their economic duty to maximize profits for their stockholders and their legal duty to (...) obey environmental laws. And the second is, given that they do have this moral obligation, what sort of environmental ethical theory (homocentrism, biocentrism, utilitarianism) ought to guide the exercise of such an obligation? This paper argues that corporations do have such moral obligations, for they are moral agents in virtue of their nonmetaphorical possession of rational capacities. This, however, implies that the corporations’ exercise of this obligation can only be properly guided by a rationalist type of ethics. (shrink)

Under what conditions, if any, do those the law addresses have a moral duty or obligation to obey it simply because it is the law? In this essay, I identify five general approaches to carrying out this task, and offer a somewhat detailed discussion of one or two examples of each approach. The approaches studied are: relational‐role approaches that appeal to the fact that an agent occupies the role of member in the political community; attempts to ground (...) the duty to obey the law in individual consent or fair play; natural duty approaches; instrumental approaches; and philosophical anarchism, an approach that denies that most subjects of contemporary states have a duty to obey the law simply in virtue of its status as such. (shrink)

Instead of the question, ‘do we have an obligation to obey the law?,’ we should first ask the more modest question, ‘do we have reasons to obey the law?’ This paper offers a new account of the notion of the content-independence of legal reasons in terms of the grounding relation. That account is then used to mount a defense of the claim that we do indeed have content-independent moral reasons to obey the law (because it (...) is the law), and that these reasons, very plausibly, often amount to an obligation to so act. (shrink)

I employ the principle of fairness to argue that many existing states have a moral duty to obey international law simply in virtue of its status as law. On this voluntarist interpretation of the principle of fairness, agents must accept the benefits of a cooperative scheme in order to acquire an obligation to contribute to that scheme’s operation. I contend that states can accept the benefits international law provides, and that only if they do so do states (...) have a fair-play duty to obey international law. In addition, I demonstrate that A. John Simmons’ criticisms of the attempt to use the principle of fairness to establish a duty to obey domestic law – both with respect to understanding the legal order as a cooperative scheme, and to agents’ acceptance of benefits – do not apply in the international context. (shrink)

This paper examines the apparently widespread belief that the democratic pedigree of a state implies a moral obligation to obey its laws. The analysis focuses on the work of Ronald Dworkin, who is, perhaps surprisingly, alone among theorists of democracy in claiming that those whom the law addresses are morally bound to obey it whenever it is democratic. From Dworkin’s expansive conception of democracy, political obligation follows. But democracy should not be construed so widely. Rather, (...) it ought to be conceived more narrowly, such that, as other theorists concede, it cannot be more than part of a case for a moral obligation to obey the law. Hence, belief in the sufficiency of democracy for political obligation, notwithstanding its ostensible popularity, has yet to be justified. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Obligation‐to‐Obey‐the‐Law What the Law Claims Matters of Form References Further Reading.

Outlining the major competing theories in the history of political and moral philosophy--from Locke and Hume through Hart, Rawls, and Nozick--John Simmons attempts to understand and solve the ancient problem of political obligation. Under what conditions and for what reasons, he asks, are we morally bound to obey the law and support the political institutions of our countries?

A widespread view among theists is that there is a moral obligation to obey God’s commands. In this paper, four arguments for this view are considered: the argument from beneficence; the argument from property rights; the argument from justice; and the argument from omnipotence and moral perfection. It is argued that none of these arguments succeeds in showing that there is a moral obligation to obey God’s commands. The paper concludes with the suggestion (...) that there might be, nevertheless, weighty and specifically religious (as distinct from moral) reasons to obey God. (shrink)

In Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco’s thoughtful and important article, “Reasons in Action v Triggering Reasons: A Reply to Enoch on Reason-Giving and Le- gal Normativity,” she explores with great care the nature of reason-giving, in connection with challenging David Enoch’s influential recent work on reason-giving and the law. While Rodriguez-Blanco’s article makes an important contribution to the literature on the best understanding of rea- son-giving and practical reasoning, it is not clear that an approach to rea- sons for action reformed along the (...) lines Rodriguez-Blanco suggests would change or clarify the ultimate question on which she focuses: the way in which legal systems in general or individual legal norms do (or do not) give citizens reasons for action. The question of whether we have a general (presumptive) moral obligation to act (or refrain from acting) as legal norms direct us depends to a significant degree on whether there are good arguments against an individualistic, case by case, approach to responding to such norms.Resumen:Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco explora con minuciosidad en su detallado e importante artículo, “Reasons in Action v Triggering Reasons: A Reply to Enoch on Reason-Giving and Legal Normativity”, la naturaleza del otorgamiento de razones, en aras de cuestionar el influyente trabajo reciente de David Enoch sobre el otorgamiento de razones y el derecho. Si bien el artículo de Rodriguez-Blanco constituye una importante contribución a la literatura en cuanto a la mejor comprensión del otorgamiento de razones y la razón práctica, no está claro si el enfoque hacia las razones para la acción, reformado sobre la línea de lo que sugiere Rodríguez-Blanco, clarificaría la cuestión primordial de la que se ocupa: la manera en que los sistemas jurídicos en general o las normas jurídicas individuales le dan (o no) a los ciudadanos razones para la acción. La cuestión sobre si tenemos una obligación moral (presuntiva) general de actuar (o de abstenerse de actuar) tal como lo disponen las normas depende en gran medida de si hay buenos argumentos en contra de un enfoque individualista y casuístico para responder a tales normas. (shrink)

Some sharing economy firms have adopted a strategy of “regulatory entrepreneurship,” openly violating regulations with the aim of rendering them dead letters. This article argues that in a democracy, regulatory entrepreneurship is a presumptively unethical business strategy. In all but the most corrupt political environments, businesses that seek to change their regulatory environment should do so through the democratic political process, and they should do so without using illegal business practices to build a political constituency. To show this, the article (...) defends a qualified moral obligation for businesspeople to obey the law even in societies that fall short of ideal democracy and that are rife with economic injustice. Owners and managers of successful businesses have strong moral reasons to obey laws concerning resource allocation. Such laws include not only property law, but also tax laws, environmental regulations, and other laws that regulate businesses in competitive markets. The moral reasons to obey such laws apply even to laws that business leaders think unfair or inefficient, provided that the laws in question have reasonable, good faith defenders. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhat is it to obey the law? What is it to disobey? Philosophers have paid little attention to these questions. Yet the concepts of obedience and disobedience have long grounded many perennial debates in moral, legal, and political philosophy. In this essay, I develop systematic accounts of each concept. The Standard View of obedience—that to obey the law is to act for a certain sort of reason provided by the law—has long been taken for granted. I argue (...) against this and other views of obedience, and develop an account of the knowledge and intention required in acts of obedience. I then develop a symmetrical account of the disobedience involved in acts of civil disobedience. The purpose of the essay is to develop a more systematic understanding of these concepts, in order to identify more precisely what is at stake in debates of political obligation, civil disobedience, and the authority of law. (shrink)

The Moral Limits of Law analyzes the related debates concerning the moral obligation to obey the law, conscientious citizenship, and state legitimacy. Modern societies are drawn in a tension between the centripetal pull of the local and the centrifugal stress of the global. Boundaries that once appeared permanent are now permeable: transnational legal, economic, and trade institutions increasingly erode the autonomy of states. Nonetheless transnational principles are still typically effected through state law. For law's subjects, this (...) tension brings into focus the interaction of legal and moral obligations and the legitimacy of state authority. This volume incorporates a comprehensive critical analysis of the methodology and substance of the debates in recent legal, political, and moral philosophy, regarding political obligation and the moral obligation to obey the law. The author argues that traditional accounts of political obligation that assume a bounded conception of the polity are no longer tenable. Higgins therefore presents an original theory of the conscientious agent's attitude towards law that accommodates the contemporary social tension between local and global obligations. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law_ provides a comprehensive, non-technical philosophical treatment of the fundamental questions about the nature of law. Its coverage includes law’s relation to morality and the moral obligations to obey the law, the main philosophical debates about particular legal areas such as criminal responsibility, property, contracts, family law, law and justice in the international domain, legal paternalism and the rule of law. The entirely new content has been written specifically for newcomers to (...) the field, making the volume particularly useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of law and related areas. All 39 chapters, written by the world’s leading researchers and edited by an internationally distinguished scholar, bring a focused, philosophical perspective to their subjects. _The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law _promises to be a_ _valuable and much consulted student resource for many years. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law_ provides a comprehensive, non-technical philosophical treatment of the fundamental questions about the nature of law. Its coverage includes law's relation to morality and the moral obligations to obey the law, the main philosophical debates about particular legal areas such as criminal responsibility, property, contracts, family law, law and justice in the international domain, legal paternalism and the rule of law. The entirely new content has been written specifically for newcomers to (...) the field, making the volume particularly useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of law and related areas. All 39 chapters, written by the world's leading researchers and edited by an internationally distinguished scholar, bring a focused, philosophical perspective to their subjects._ The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law_ promises to be a valuable and much consulted student resource for many years. (shrink)

International and domestic law offer a study in contrasts: States' legal obligations often depend on their consent to specific international legal norms, whereas domestic law applies to individuals with or without their consent; enforcement in international law is weak and, for many international treaties, non‐existent, whereas states spend considerable resources to create centralized coercive enforcement mechanisms; and international law is characterized by much less institutional differentiation and specialization of functions than domestic legal systems are. These differences have invited a number (...) of skeptical challenges to international law, 3 of which we explore in this essay. The first points to 1 or more of the deviations of international law's institutional structure from that of a modern state's legal system as a basis for denying that international law is really “law.” Central to the debates over international law's status as law are concerns about whether and why the concepts of law inherited from domestic legal systems should serve as the blueprint for theorizing law in general and international law in particular. The second skeptical challenge targets international law's legitimacy. It claims that we lack reasons to treat international legal norms or the exercise of political power by international institutions, as anything other than an attempt by states to advance their national interests. If this challenge succeeds, states and other subjects of international law have merely prudential reasons to comply with it rather than a moral duty to obey it. Following a brief description of recent debates over how we ought to understand the concept of legitimacy when used to assess international political practices or global governance, we survey several possible bases for a moral duty to obey or respect international law. These include state consent, instrumental accounts of legitimate authority, and global democracy. The third set of challenges focuses on the relationship between state sovereignty and international law. International rules and institutions often make demands for reform affecting the domestic law of a state in order to elicit compliance with international law. Skeptics argue that the rule of international law is incompatible with states' political self‐determination. Regardless of whether their defense of this claim ultimately succeeds, thoughtful engagement with it may well require us to rethink some of the fundamental concepts and normative ideals in political philosophy, including state sovereignty, democracy, individual rights, political authority, and political obligation. (shrink)

The most important moral question concerned with the problem of political obligation relates to the limits of obedience of a citizen owed to the state. The problem of political obligation raises the questions such as – (1) To what extent the citizen has an obligation to obey the laws of the state? (2) Is the citizen of a state, whether democratic or otherwise, under an obligation to obey the unjust laws of the state? (...) There are two different viewpoints concerning the character of obligation to obey the laws of the State. (1) The first position states -- “one has an absolute obligation to obey the law and therefore disobedience to the state law is never justified”. (2) The second position asserts -- “one has a prima facie obligation to obey the law, but this obligation can be overridden by conflictingobligations. Hence disobedience to the state law can be justified in the presence of outweighing circumstances”. (shrink)

Do citizens have an obligation to obey the law? This book differs from standard approaches by shifting from the language of obedience to that of deference. The popular view that law claims authority but does not have it is here reversed on both counts: law does not claim authority but has it. Though the focus is on political obligation, the author approaches that issue indirectly by first developing a more general account of when deference is due to (...) the view of others. Two standard practices that political theorists often consider in exploring the question of political obligation - fair-play and promise-keeping - can themselves be seen as examples of a duty of deference. In this respect the book defends a more general theory of ethics whose scope extends beyond the question of political obligation to questions of duty in the case of law, promises, fair play and friendship. (shrink)

The civil rights, antiwar, and student upheavals of our day have served, aside from their primary objectives, to reawaken our consciousness of the basic problems of ethical and political obligation.

ABSTRACTAccording to the standard or traditional account, those who hold political authority legitimately have a right to rule that entails an obligation of obedience on the part of those who are subject to their authority. In recent decades, however, and in part in response to philosophical anarchism, a number of philosophers have challenged the standard account by reconceiving authority in ways that break or weaken the connection between political authority and obligation. This paper argues against these revisionist accounts (...) in two ways: first, by pointing to defects in their conceptions of authority; and second, by sketching a fair-play approach to authority and political obligation that vindicates the standard account. (shrink)

This paper examines the claim that justice is necessary for a moral obligation to obey the law. By reflecting on the meaning of obedience, it identifies one version of the claim that must be right and another that must be wrong. It then focuses on the argument for a moral obligation to obey the law that most obviously includes the claim: John Rawls’s argument from the natural duty of justice. More specifically, it focuses on (...) the degree of justice that is needed for this duty to ground a moral obligation to obey the law. (shrink)

Whether we are morally obligated to obey the law is the central question addressed by Joseph Raz in his most recent work entitled, The Authority of Law. It is a question which divides positivists from natural law adherents. Professor Raz, a self-proclaimed positivist, concludes that “there is no general moral obligation to obey [the law], not even in a good society.” Rather, for Raz he individual must obey the law only if he respects it. “His (...) respect,” says Raz, “is the source of obligation,” leading one to conclude that for Raz the authority of law is the individual. The question of whether we are morally bound to obey the law is not a novel one; foremost among those who have addressed it are Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas. Each does so, it is important to note, in terms of the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of government, which, in turn, is based upon a correct understanding of the nature of man and human happiness. The law of an illegitimate government, argues St. Thomas, “since it is not in accordance with reason, is not a law absolutely speaking, but rather a perversion of law.”. (shrink)

Voluntaristic theories of political obligation claim that a citizen's moral obligation to obey his state's laws is grounded in his voluntary undertakings or agreements. Two of this view's more popular varieties are consent theories and reciprocation theories, the former grounding a citizen's political obligation in a promise and the latter grounding it in the acceptance or the receipt of the benefits of social cooperation. A common objection to these theories is that they cannot justify political (...) obligation because the actual relationship between citizens and their state is insufficiently voluntary. (shrink)

Legitimate authority -- The claims of law -- Legal positivism and the sources of law -- Legal reasons, sources, and gaps -- The identity of legal systems -- The institutional nature of law -- Kelsen's theory of the basic norm -- Legal validity -- The functions of law -- Law and value in adjudication -- The rule of law and its virtue -- The obligation to obey the law -- Respect for law -- A right to dissent? : (...) civil disobedience -- A right to dissent? : conscientious objection --The purity of the pure theory -- The argument from justice, or how not to reply to legal positivism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the terms on which John Simmons rejects all arguments for a moral obligation to obey the law and so defends “philosophical anarchism.” Although I accept his rejection of several criteria on which others might and often do insist, I criticize his reliance on the conditions of “generality” and “particularity.” In doing so, I propose an alternative to his influential conception of legitimacy.

The moral formulation of philosophical anarchism is that most persons, even in just political communities, do not have a moral obligation to obey the law. The epistemological formulation of philosophical anarchism is that most persons are unjustified in believing that they have a moral obligation to obey the law. But the philosophical anarchists’ argument strategies do not, and in fact cannot, show that belief in the moral obligation to obey the (...) law is unjustified. And, further, given that most persons in just political communities do believe that they are under such an obligation, the moral requirement that one ought to act in accordance with one’s conscience implies that most persons have a moral obligation to obey the law. Thus the moral formulation of philosophical anarchism is false and the epistemological formulation unjustified. (shrink)

As a conscientious moral agent, a judge in a court of law often finds herself in a difficult position. She is confident that the law requires a certain result in the case before her, but she is at least as confident that this legally required result is unjust or otherwise morally objectionable. Consider some examples of cases in which a reasonable judge might consider herself to be in this position: ▪ The law of landlord and tenant can require a (...) judge to evict an impoverished, elderly widow from her apartment for missing rent payments.1 ▪ A student in a poor school district sues his state for providing a much lower caliber of education than students receive in wealthier districts. Binding legal precedent requires the judge to dismiss the student’s lawsuit. ▪ Binding precedents construing the Fourth Amendment require judges to exclude evidence obtained without a search warrant. As a result, a child molester is acquitted, and, predictably, strikes again. (shrink)

When a business has competitors that break a burdensome law, is it morally required to obey this law, or may it break the law to avoid an unfair competitive disadvantage? Though this ethical question is pervasive in the business world, many non-skeptical theories of the obligation to obey the law cannot give it a clear answer. A broadly Kantian account, by contrast, can explain why businesspeople ought to obey laws of a certain type even under competitive (...) pressure, namely laws that play a direct role in defining rights to use physical or financial resources free from substantial interference. Businesspeople must obey these laws even at the cost of allowing their businesses to fail and even when the acts proscribed are mala prohibita. This argument for obeying the law in competitive contexts has limited scope. Considerations of fairness or self-preservation may justify violating laws of other types under competitive pressure. (shrink)

Like many people these days, I believe there is no general moral obligation to obey the law. I shall explain why there is no such moral obligation – and I shall clarify what I mean when I say there is no moral obligation to obey the law – as we proceed. But also like many people, I am unhappy with a position that would say there was no moral obligation to (...) obey the law and then say no more about the law's moral significance. In our thinking about law in a resonably just society, we have a strong inclination to invest law with a sort of moral halo. It does not feel right to suggest that law is a morally neutral social fact, nor to suggest that law is merely a useful social technique. In this essay, I shall try to account in part for law's moral halo. Because I share the widespread inclination to invest law with this halo, I shall not be interested in a merely historical account of how we come to see law with a halo – a pure “error theory” of law's halo, if you will. I want to justify the halo. On the other hand, the main way to justify the halo is to get clear just what law's moral significance is. It is unlikely that at the end of the process of clarification the halo will have exactly the shape or luminance that it had at the beginning. (shrink)